#GenghizInLove: Episode 45

I returned to life with a grimace. I had a sour taste in my mouth, the acrid tang of rusted iron. I frowned and rubbed my gums gingerly. My finger returned, dripping with blood. I groaned. I had been feeling guilty for months now about missing my last check-up with my regular dentist, Barbie's dad, Dr. Boopstein. But what would that mild-mannered balding Rotarian say when he saw my newly acquired fangs?

"Lots of vampires in Kalifornia," a voice said gruffly. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, sitting at my sickbed was my mind-reading boss, Otto Hell. He fixed me with his beady brown eyes. "Rudi tells me you're a little shaken up."

I laughed wildly, spitting out a fine red spray of blood. "How would you feel after discovering that you've been carrying around a spirit within you without even knowing it?"

"Depends whose spirit," Hell answered evenly. "Aren't you glad that Anastasia is with you?"

"Within me," I corrected him. "Not with me. Within. There's a difference."

Hell shrugged. "So spit her out. You need to find a suitable body for Anastasia's spirit. Lots of fish in the sea."

"What about the other girl's spirit?"

"Big fish eat little fish."

"You want me to commit murder!"

"More like theft, really. Besides, you're just an accomplice."

Pipi emerged from her bathroom in a slinky pink bikini. "Like it?" she asked, pirouetting before us. "I'm going to lunch."

"Dressed like that?" Hell scowled. "This is, after all, a university. Might consider my reputation."

Pipi's little face contorted. She burst into tears. "I'm good for your reputation!" she sniffled. "You're old and I'm sexy. I'm a fine trophy!"

"Good point," Hell agreed.

Pipi sobbed a little longer, dried her eyes, put on a dressing gown, snapped her fingers, and disappeared. Lady Rudolphine sat before us, white haired, dignified, sedately smiling. "As you see, my dear, it really is quite easy to change bodies," she remarked calmly. "And most enjoyable."

"For you maybe, Lady Rudolphine," I replied acerbically. "But how does Pipi feel about it?"

Lady Rudolphine shrugged. "Does it matter? To be honest, I doubt if the silly little thing has even noticed." She rolled her eyes in her head and vanished. Pipi wriggled in her chair. "Are you coming to lunch?" she pouted. "I'm hungry. You talk too much."

"I can't handle this," I groaned. "Are you really suggesting that I should seduce some brainless little chiclet and pour Anastasia into her? It seems so immoral..."

"What's morality got to do with it?" Hell growled. "Just pouring old wine into new bottles."

"But I don't even know how to do it..."

"Didn't have any trouble decanting Anastasia into Madlenova," Hell pointed out. "Follow your instincts."

"I must have been following my instincts when I went with Madlenova. And it didn't work."

"Too ambitious. You're just a novice vampire. Madlenova is a tough cookie. Need to practise your bite on softer prey."

Lady Rudolphine reappeared, nodding. "Otto is right. In any case, don't worry about getting it wrong. We can replace your missing instincts."

"Oh no," I wailed in horror. "More drugs?"

Lady Rudolphine grinned wickedly. She dug out a small glass bottle from her handbag and held it up. The little phial glittered in the light. "Basic Instinct."

"Is that another of your pet drug designer's special creations?"

"Dear Hans van der Annersvoort." Lady Rudolphine smiled fondly. "He really is very inventive."

I hazarded a guess. "Is he also in England now? Along with Sleaze and Nina Hamidi?"

Lady Rudolphine gazed at me coolly. Generations of aristocrats frowned haughtily at me through her deep blue eyes. "I don't keep track of Hans' precise movements. I'm not that fond of him." She handed me the little glass phial. "This is the small emergency supply of Basic Instinct I keep with me when I travel. It's very easy to use. Just dab a drop into any open wound. A scratch will do. I usually use a sharpened hairpin. I shall leave it with you when I go."

"You're leaving?" I asked in distress. "When? Where are you going?"

"My dear little man, I do have other responsibilities besides dealing with your absurdly trivial emotional storms in a teacup," Lady Rudolphine replied evenly. "I have to go to various gallery openings, opera premieres, charity balls, and visit the Queen, whom I have been neglecting shamelessly in the last few weeks and the poor dear does take on so if I don't pop in every once in a while even though it is such a bore for she has absolutely no conversation and she has taken to pouting (and given her lower lip, can you imagine the sight? It really is quite frightening) and stamping her feet and throwing infantile tantrums, quite absurd behavior, really, even if these are trying times for her, what with the most peculiar way in which her children are behaving, positively encouraging the press to photograph them posing naked on Swiss ski slopes and having their toes sucked on Caribbean beaches, and people burning down her castles, and those silly Australians wanting to get rid of her and set up on their own, and even the most die-hard Tories are demanding that she pay taxes and she can't very well move her assets offshore, now, can she, it would be setting a bad example, besides which, Britain already is an island, and, you know, I really do have to take care of my paralysed son."

"I'm sorry, Lady Rudolphine," I said remorsefully. "I had totally forgotten..."

"Oh, Murti Bing is probably fine," the old lady replied. "He keeps himself busy. He has rather a lot of colleagues working with him at the moment."

"Colleagues? What does he do?"

"Oh, this and that. You might say that he is a sort of... chemist." Lady Rudolphine chuckled. "Alchemist is more like it, actually."

"Alchemist." I stared at Lady Rudolphine. My brain felt oddly clear and it wasn't just that I hadn't had a drink in a long time. Little snippets of various casual conversations flashed before me, gleaming bits of information like random pieces of cardboard thrown up into the air, mere confetti until one saw how they fell, settling themselves into place, integral parts of a complex jigsaw puzzle. Some unidentified expert had altered the chemical structure of the pill which Luke Leazy had designed for the X-O-X Foundation. Luke had been invited by the X-O-X Foundation to work in England with a genius who had designed drugs in the sixties in San Francisco. Saure had told Anastasia that the woman who designed her love potions, Nina Hamidi, had gone to England on urgent business, an opportunity she couldn't pass up. Lady Rudolphine had revealed to me that she obtained Lethe from the underground drug designer in Amsterdam, Hans van der Annersvoort, and that she had heard of my friend Luke. And on our first meeting at Prince Ludwig's suicide party she had told me that her son Murti Bing had spent a lot of time in San Francisco in the sixties. Murti Bing, the alchemist. What the hell was he stirring up in his little cauldron together with the best underground drug designers of the world? And to what terrifying end?

"I'm sure you can guess," Lady Rudolphine smiled.

"Xox wants to take over the world."

"He's already done that," Hell replied casually. "By far the richest man in the world now. Probably the most feared as well."

"What about the Sultan of Arabia?"

"Cutting off arms and legs is small stuff," Hell said dismissively. "Feudal foolishness. Flogging frightens nobody anymore. Whole crowds of Western degenerates flocking to Arabia these days. Punish us, the masochists bleat, and the mullahs don't know how to respond. In any case, the Sultan is terrified of Xox."

"Why?"

"Asking questions again," Hell said reprovingly. "Use your head instead."

"I'm on sick leave. What does Xox want?"

"To win friends and influence people."

"By giving them drugs?"

Hell shrugged. "Why not? As good a way as any other."

A sudden flash of insight blazed through my head. My eyeballs nearly popped. "Did Xox set up the University of Truth and Justice as an experiment? To test all these new attitude-changing drugs on a bunch of depressed intellectuals?"

"Did you just figure that out?" Hell looked at me in surprise. "Thought you knew it all along."

I giggled hysterically. "How silly of me. Of course I should have known. Why else would anyone set up a university in Central Europe?"

"The alchemists began by experimenting with prisoners on death row," Lady Rudolphine recalled. "But then we realized that we needed to test the Nice pill's effects simultaneously on three dimensions: intelligence, morality, and pleasure. And it's hard to check pleasure levels on death row..."

"So you decided to experiment on students instead. Giving them `vitamins'."

"Exactly. It was the perfect pretext."

I looked at Hell severely. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Hell scowled back at me. "What for?"

"You're the greatest living intellectual in the world," I protested. "You've been teaching in institutions of higher learning all your life. Aren't you shocked and dismayed at this sort of subversion of academic standards?"

"How did you spend your time when you were in university?" Hell demanded.

I looked down, shame-faced. "Taking drugs and hanging out with other delinquents."

Hell shrugged. "Our students do that too. Just in laboratory conditions. What's the problem?"

"Oh, nothing really, I guess." I sat up in alarm as Lady Rudolphine approached. "What are you doing?"

"Another dose of Lethe." Lady Rudolphine deftly dabbed the lotion onto my forehead and balls.

I squirmed at her touch and giggled. "It tickles. Am I going to forget everything again?"

"Just inconvenient memories. This should keep you from feeling heartbreak," Lady Rudolphine explained. "And you will only remember Basic Instinct when the time is right. The repeated dose will keep you out of mischief for a while."

"Whatever." I spat out another mouthful of steaming-hot blood into my handkerchief. "Why is there all this blood in my mouth?"

"Just means you're hungry. You're a vampire, aren't you?" Hell reminded me. He rose to his feet and put his arm around Pipi's waist. "Coming down to lunch? There's a meeting afterwards which I particularly want you to attend."

I sighed and got out of bed. I knew that I was going to spend the next few days looking around furtively for fresh meat. I wondered if I would spot a potential target at lunch. I wanted Anastasia back, even at the cost of my better feelings. I felt sorry for my prey but I really had no choice. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially for the victim.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 44

I paused outside Lady Rudolphine's door and knocked hesitantly. After a moment the door opened. Wrapped in a frilly pink negligee, her short blonde hair tousled, Pipi von G and T smiled sleepily at me.

"Pipi!" I exclaimed, startled. "What are you doing here?"

"Sleeping, obviously. What happened to you last night?"

I blinked. Pipi's voice had changed. It was much deeper. And I had never noticed her very English accent before. "Where's Lady Rudolphine?"

Pipi stared at me coolly. I had never noticed her cornflower blue eyes. "I'm right here."

"Where?" I tried to peep around Pipi.

She sighed. "In front of you, stupid." And, as my jaw dropped open and the world went around my dazzled eyes, before I slumped to the floor in a dead faint, I heard her sigh again. "Honestly. Men. They just can't handle change. A little makeover and the boy faints…"

Eventually, I came back to life. I shakily sipped strong black coffee and looked questioningly at her. Lady Rudolphine or Pipi: what was I supposed to call her?

"Either," she answered. "Call me Pipi when I'm pretty and silly. Lady Rudolphine when I'm old and witty."

"You can flip back and forth?" I asked, stunned.

"Of course." She smiled, spread her hands, and rolled her eyes. The little blonde cutie transmuted into a dignified tanned old lady with a dangerous flicker in her dark blue eyes.

I gasped. "How did you do that?"

"I took over Pipi," Lady Rudolphine replied calmly. "Like a merger. Or an acquisition. Good deal for her too. Axel's lawyers would have cheated her out of her inheritance. And she really wouldn't have been able to handle Schloss Himmelsberg by herself."

"And you get a new body to play with?" I stared at Lady Rudolphine open-mouthed.

She nodded cheerfully, rolled her eyes again, and, there she was, cute little Pipi, throwing her blonde hair out of her face. "Isn't it fun?" Her voice was higher now and more accented and the eyes were a paler blue. "It's like playing with dolls."

"Is Otto ready for this?" I asked dubiously. "Does he know that you've acquired his fiancee, body and soul?"

"What's a body or two between friends? We've been together for so many years anyway. Variety adds spice to relationships." Pipi snapped her fingers. Lady Rudolphine reappeared. She frowned at me. "But where were you last night? You need another dose of Lethe."

"No, Lady Rudolphine, I'm not up for it right now," I moaned, dreading the thought of being boiled again in the hot shower. "I've just had the strangest experience. It's a long story." I told Lady Rudolphine about Madlenova's late-night seduction. "Then there's nothing much to tell," I said, shrugging. "We fell asleep. Madlenova had obviously put something in the tea. Another of these love potions you all seem to use." I glowered irritably at Lady Rudolphine. "Why can't you witches just content yourselves with Chanel Number Five?"

"Love potions are more efficient," Lady Rudolphine replied reasonably. "Go on."

"In my dream we were walking hand in hand in the moonlight. But the moon came closer. She was actually leading me towards the light. But the heart of the light was an impenetrable darkness. It came from... the dark woman. She stroked my face with her hairy paw. The fur was soft as velvet."

"What happened then?" Lady Rudolphine breathed.

"I clambered up in her lap and looked into her eyes. I knew that she would not hurt me." I shivered. "I entered the darkness. Madlenova was there. In that darkness we fought for a long time. She wanted to take me into her. I was afraid. Some part of me wanted to be taken, to lose myself utterly. She knew it and she fought harder. That was her mistake. I stopped struggling and let her swallow me. But she couldn't. She choked. Then I took her. But I couldn't keep her." I stared wide-eyed at Lady Rudolphine. "Then the dream ended. When I woke up Madlenova was furious with me. I still don't understand what happened."

Lady Rudolphine looked at me peculiarly and began to laugh. Clutching her sides, howling hysterically, she collapsed into a chair and waved her long legs about in the air. I averted my eyes and scowled at the wall. I didn't see what was so very funny about my sex life.

"How utterly hilarious..."

"The humor escapes me," I said stiffly and stared in outrage as Lady Rudolphine began to laugh again.

"That's what makes it so funny," she replied, struggling to control a fresh spasm of giggles. "You don't even know what you did."

"What did I do?" I cried in exasperation. My lower lip quivered mutinously. I wanted a warm bed and a pretty maid to bring me breakfast. I wanted a hot bath and a thick soft towel. I wanted silk pyjamas and a dressing gown and padded slippers and a big armchair in which to lounge all day sipping tall cool drinks and flipping through glossy art magazines. I wanted comfort and luxury and a life free of complications. Instead I had a bad taste in my mouth and the dismal prospect of a day filled with meetings. The image of Otto Hell cackling as he went ice-fishing fused with the sight of Lady Rudolphine chortling away. Why couldn't these grown-ups at least stop laughing at me if they weren't going to explain anything?

"You raped Madlenova."

"No, I didn't," I protested. "There was no violence involved. Besides, she seduced me. I didn't even want to go to bed with her."

"Didn't you?" Lady Rudolphine grinned. "Most men would gladly lose their souls to go to bed with her. Those whom she takes usually do lose their souls. To her. They become her creatures. She plays with them until she gets bored."

I shuddered. "What happens to them then?"

Lady Rudolphine smiled again. "What happens to people who lose their souls?"

"They go to hell," I replied devoutly. "And burn forever."

Lady Rudolphine shrugged. "Ah, hell," she said lightly. "Hell, is a metaphor. No devils with pitchforks, no eternal fires."

"How do you know?"

"Because I have been there." Lady Rudolphine's eyes bored into me. "And so have you." A sharp steel spike slammed, sizzling, into my heart, shattering it again into a million small pieces. I groaned and clutched my chest. The pain was so intense that I could barely breathe. It was all I could do to stop myself from screaming aloud at the agony. My head was spinning and I saw little stars before my eyes, cold stars, distant and cruel, mocking my anguish with their indifference. As through a fog I dimly saw fiery curls on a bowed head, a pure profile with full sensitive lips speaking words I could not hear, would never hear... Lady Rudolphine released me from her gaze. The spike slid from my heart. I gasped and blinked the tears out of my eyes. "That is hell," Lady Rudolphine said slowly. "Hell is being deprived of what one loves."

"I want Anastasia back," I mumbled sadly. "I miss her so much..."

"I know." Lady Rudolphine nodded sympathetically. But then her lips curled and she burst out laughing joyously. "And Madlenova knows too. Do you understand now why she is so insulted?"

I shook my head. "No. What did I do?"

"You dear silly man," Lady Rudolphine replied fondly. "You tried to turn her into Anastasia."

"How did I do that?"

"You overpowered her spirit and poured Anastasia into her. Of course, it didn't last for very long, Madlenova is far too strong to take over just like that." Lady Rudolphine cracked up again. She wiped her streaming eyes. "Oh, I should have loved to have seen Madlenova's face," Lady Rudolphine gasped between chuckles. "The vampire out-vamped, the biter bit, overpowered by a mere boy... Oh, dear, how very humiliating."

"What do you mean, I `poured Anastasia into her'?" I asked slowly.

Lady Rudolphine stopped laughing. She looked at me with enormous affection. "Where do you think Anastasia is right now?"

"I don't know," I replied, bewildered. "In Berlin with Axel?"

Lady Rudolphine shook her head. "No," she said sweetly. "She's right here. In you. She kissed you. Remember?"

And in that moment, I was deluged once again in an ecstasy I had felt only once before but which I instantly recognized. I felt myself drowning in honey, immersed in its slow lethargic weight, overwhelmed by the buzzing of bees on a drowsy summer day, imbued with the tangy sweetness of Anastasia. I can't remember fainting but I must have keeled over again. Going catatonic twice in one morning was a new record even for me, but then it was that kind of morning.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 43

Following Hell's example, I spent the day fishing. Like all good Czechs, Divka had a weekend cottage in the countryside. I sat in the backseat of her cramped Skoda, tenderly cradling our precious picnic basket in my arms, as she maneuvered the little wreck down potholed country roads. Immanuel sat beside her, occasionally bouncing through the sunroof. It was a very enjoyable ride, and Divka's driving was positively sedate compared to my other recent chauffeurs.

Divka's weekend retreat was a small shack by a little lake whose viridian surface waveringly mirrored a low range of tree-covered hills. We found some ancient fishing tackle that had belonged to her father and headed for the water. For me, that lazy afternoon in the sun was a blessed respite from the violence and anguish of the previous week. Sitting companionably on rocks at the edge of the lake, we whiled the time away. I munched ham sandwiches washed down with lots of Becherovka and incited the plump and placid ducks with my crumbs.

Warmed by the winter sun and the glow of Dr. Becher's fabulous herb liqueur, I eventually told Immanuel and Divka about Anastasia's abduction. They sat side by side, hand in hand, and listened to my tale of woe, nodding in unison like sympathetic birds. Couples are fortresses, and I felt both excluded and protected in the shadow of their commingled strength.

"Did I tell you, Wenceslas knows your Anastasia? She acted in a production of his play Salome. He thought she was great."

"I don't know how much acting Anastasia will be doing from now on," I replied heavily. "Axel believes in keeping them barefoot and pregnant apparently."

"He should be deported to Afghanistan!" Divka's eyes flashed with indignation. "It is disgusting that the British should help him kidnap her. Wenceslas is the chairman of the European Human Rights Commission. Do you want him to make a big stink?"

"Maybe not just yet, Divka," I replied cautiously, remembering my encounters with the Czech police. "Let me ask Otto first."

"So Otto thinks that your friend Godfrey told Killjoy-Yuck where you were, and Killjoy-Yuck told Axel?" Immanuel asked doubtfully. "It seems too complicated."

"There are so many others who could have also called Axel," Divka added. "What about Gauss's bodyguards? One of them could have been an informer. Or maybe even Prince Ludwig. Didn't he force Anastasia to marry Axel in the first place?"

I shook my head. "You're right, Divka. We can't rule anyone out. But this isn't just your average messy divorce. There's the whole Katholic connection as well with the Cardinal in cahoots with Axel to bring back the Holy Roman Emperor bloodline. And Axel knew who I was. He knew I was going back to Prague. Nobody could have told him that except Godfrey."

"I still don't understand what Terence Killjoy-Yuck gets out of this," Immanuel objected. "You said he was your tutor at Oxford… I don't mean to pry, but what exactly did you have to do for him?"

"I wasn't his bum-boy, if that's what you mean."

"So why did he send you to Prague in the first place?"

"Takes a philosopher to ask the obvious question," I replied irascibly. "I've been chewing over that one since the day I arrived. My friend Lulu thought I was being sent here as a scapegoat."

"For Lucy's murder?"

"This was before Lucy's murder." I hesitated. "I think Terence planted me here for some other reason. I don't think he wanted Lucy murdered. Rasputin confessed that he was just supposed to kidnap her."

"Why would Terence want Lucy kidnapped?"

"He knew Xox and Lucy were lovers. Maybe he wanted to hold her for ransom. Or just get the dirt on Xox."

"What I still don't understand is this connection between Lucy and Rasputin," Divka interrupted. "He didn't have to find her, she took a taxi to go to the train station where she so conveniently runs into her murderer. And then again in Berlin."

"You buy this body-stealing shit?" Immanuel sniffed.

"It takes a philosopher to ignore the facts," Divka retorted. "Can you come up with a better explanation?"

Immanuel and Divka bickered all the way on the long ride back to Prague. By the time they dropped me at the university building, they were no longer on talking terms. It was past midnight, time to go to bed. I let myself into the building with my spare entry card, which I had thoughtfully preserved. I longed for a night of rest, of darkness and quiet, of deep sleep unmarred by unnerving conspiracies or dreams. I wondered idly if Lady Rudolphine was already asleep or if she would insist on administering another dose of her mysterious ointment, Lethe. What was it all about?

Just then a dark form glided over. "I was waiting for you to come to my room all day," a husky voice murmured. "You did not obey my orders. Come with me now and I will punish you." Sharp fingernails lightly grazed my neck and slid down inside the back of my shirt onto my shoulders. I shivered. Marya Madlenova took my hand and led me down the darkened corridor towards the elevator. I sighed deeply. No rest for the wicked.

Expecting some dank dungeon where I would be tormented with molten wax by noseless executioners, I blinked in surprise as Marya Madlenova led me into her lush boudoir, silken cushions and buttery soft spreads scattered everywhere, all silvery pink and lime green, a faint perfume in the air like distant atonal music. Madlenova released my hand and smiled. "Would you like some tea?" she murmured.

"Yes, please," I said, looking around me in wonder. "Are we still in the university building?"

Madlenova laughed, a low voluptuous laugh as she busied herself with the tea. Watching her graceful movements, again I was disconcerted by a sense of something strange, as though she were lacking a limb. She handed me a porcelain cup so sheer that the steaming liquid within glowed through, golden, translucent. "Money makes life very simple," she observed. "Do you like the tea?"

I held the cup to my face and took a sip. "It's exquisite. The incomparable bouquet of first-picked small-leaf Darjeeling but there is something else in here too..."

"Well, well," Madlenova interrupted quickly. "I see you know something about tea."

"A little." I didn't tell her that I had spent my last two winter vacations playing hooky: instead of going skiing in the French Alps with rich friends, as I had promised my mother, who is constantly concerned that I don't make enough useful contacts, I had worked on tea plantations in the foothills of the Himalayas, back-breaking work for laughable wages, but also the priceless pleasure of holding a freshly plucked and gently bruised tea leaf, its perfume wafting into my quivering nostrils like the morning mist on a sunny hillside. This tea had all that but there was another aroma as well, the smell of algae rotting in the sea, the fragrance of over-ripe femininity...

Madlenova curled up against me. We drank our tea in silence. Warm waves of well-being rippled softly through me, but also an odd foreboding. She looked up and smiled again, not the predatory sneer I had seen earlier in the afternoon but a gentle smile, the grave smile of a sensitive and trusting child grown old before its time. Knowing that I would regret it, I stroked her silky hair and flinched at the static charge that jolted my hand. A short eternity later, we were lying together in her bed.

Expecting pain, I received only pleasure, the simple pleasure of holding a soft slim warm body, the pleasure of affectionate murmurs and liquid kisses and gentle caresses which led to a love-making which felt like walking together, hand in hand, in the moonlight. We fell asleep curled up together like two little kittens.

But when I woke up next morning, Marya Madlenova was staring at me sullenly, her eyes like brooding yellow slits in the face of a jungle cat. "Get out of here," she snarled. "I never want to see you again."

"What did I do?" I asked, bewildered.

"I've never been so humiliated in my life. Get out."

I scrambled into my wrinkled clothes. "Won't you tell me what I did..." I began again weakly.

"Out!" she screamed wildly. "Out!"

"Okay, okay," I mumbled and went in search of fresh clothes and an explanation.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 42

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.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 41

"All right. Off with those boxer shorts," Lady Rudolphine commanded briskly.

"Can't we just go to sleep?" I pleaded, covering my nakedness. "You can have the bed. I'll sleep in an armchair."

"Oh, do be quiet," Lady Rudolphine snapped. "You don't think I'm doing this for fun, do you?"

"You're not?" I asked, slightly affronted. "Why do you want me to get naked then?"

"I shall teach you how to sleep."

"But I know how to sleep," I cried. "It's practically all I've done since I was born! I'm an expert sleeper. It's what I do best!"

Lady Rudolphine sighed, gracefully subsiding into an armchair. "Look, dear, just go into the bathroom, take a shower, as hot as you can stand it, and come back out... without those absurd shorts." She shook her head in disbelief. "Were you a clown in the circus?"

I gasped in outrage at this gratuitous slight to my beloved boxer shorts. I vividly remembered that wonderful day in my first month at Oxford when I had finally been allowed to lay my greedy little paws on my monthly allowance from my mother. My bank had decided that the amount sent was far too large for a mere student and that I must be making money by pushing vast quantities of hard drugs and I was only saved from languishing behind bars by the direct intervention of the Amerikan Ambassador, whose children had trustingly played `Doctor' with me in my degenerate days as a diplomat's brat in El Salvador, and while I had almost entirely reformed after my mother caught us in a particularly ambiguous `hospital' scene, my other playmates all became ambulance-chasers, dentists, and hypochondriacs, causing their parents to feel a dazed respect for my mother and to wonder where they themselves had gone wrong. When Uncle Sam persuaded the British police that it was all right for me to spend my own (well, my mother's) money, I prudently went first to the local fine-wine shop and bought large quantities of premium Bordeaux, and only then, having paid my dues to the inexorable dictates of good taste, scurried around the corner to a dark little shop in whose windows I had greedily coveted many bolts of brightly colored silks. After an afternoon of fun, wallowing in yards of canary yellow and permanganate purple and arterial crimson and tropical green, a chance glance at my watch reminded me of the pressing errand yet to be done: throwing large bills at the shopkeeper, I marched into Oxford's staidest haberdashery, plunked down my brightly-colored silks beneath the twitching nostrils of the old geezer behind the counter, and demanded boxer shorts. It took a little while because of all the fuss, commotion, and delay caused in sending off the old geezer to the emergency coronary ward, but eventually a younger and more stout-hearted fitter took all my measurements imperturbably, shook hands with me respectfully, and, when I expressed concern for the old geezer, gravely replied, "Well, sir, if we had known of his heart condition we would have terminated his employment much earlier. A tailoring establishment in Oxford is no place for the faint-hearted, sir. As they say in Amerika, `If you can't stand the heat get out of the oven!'"

And so I resented Lady Rudolphine's slurs about my boxer shorts. Admittedly, they were yellow and purple and red and green and very dirty to boot, but they were mine, just about all I had in the world, I couldn't help reflecting.

"Just do what I say," Lady Rudolphine murmured wearily. "Don't you want Anastasia back?"

I turned on the shower to the hottest possible setting, and screamed as excruciating needles of steam pinned me to the slippery wall like St. Sebastian, except that the arrows with which he was martyred hadn't been heated red-hot first. But as a good martyr ought, I fixed my mind on my divinity, my idol, my Anastasia. Eventually I found myself slumped on the floor of the shower, muttering her name over and over again... I didn't know which hurt more, the stinging steam or my heart's anguish as I remembered the face of my lost love. I crawled out of the shower, patted myself dry, wincing at the touch of the towel on my boiled flesh, and walked back into the dark room.

"Here," a voice softly directed and I groped towards it obediently, too weary and sick at heart to resist. Covers were drawn over me. At first I could hear only the pounding of my heart. After a while I could distinguish the regular sound of soft even breathing. I tried to breathe to the same rhythm but it was no use, my breath sounded ragged and oddly squeaky. I began to shiver uncontrollably. A velvety hand gently caressed my forehead and temples. I began to cry. The tears sprang out of my eyes and coursed down my face as though a strange hand were pumping them forth from some deep arterial well of misery, some subterranean strata of my soul, a deep dark liquid reserve which had been discovered and tapped only now, only now...

I cried for a long time. In that dark warm moist place my tears were a salty river rushing past massive rocks, corroding the granite of my thoughts at their foundations. My conscious mind continued feebly to resist all this gushing emotion but the rocks swayed, tumbled, and fell into the dark swift current. The rumble of thunder, the unending noise of falling water, and then a warm red darkness...

And in that darkness I saw Anastasia, that heart-shaped freckled face framed by flaming curls. But the fire in her eyes was gone, she looked out at me as though blinded. I groaned and reached out to her, but my hands encountered a cool hardness, as though I were stroking glass. As in a mirror, I saw Anastasia's hands reach out for mine, and I felt a confused tumult in my soul. Then I felt a dark brooding presence behind me and I saw Axel appear behind Anastasia. He laid his hands on my darling's neck and I cried out in anger, reaching out to tear away his brutal hands. His hands were on my throat, squeezing and I was gagging, choking, struggling for air. But then an odd calm descended on me, and I realised that I was free. Axel could never hurt me. I dropped all resistance and when I stopped fighting, Axel's hands tightened vainly and he struggled and cursed hoarsely but to no avail. He rolled around the floor like a fool fighting with a ghost and I stood over him, smiling.

I felt weak as a kitten when I woke up, and as blind. The light flooding into the room dazzled my eyes. After a while I saw Lady Rudolphine standing by the window in an azure satin dressing gown. "How do you feel?" she asked gently.

"Axel!" I fought with the sheets for a moment, struggling for breath. "He was choking me…"

"Astral combat. Quite normal. How do you feel now?"

I didn't know how to answer. How does a new-born feel? "Hungry, I suppose," I replied solemnly.

Lady Rudolphine burst out laughing. "Good! We were supposed to meet Otto and Pipi for lunch about two hours ago."

"Whatever," I said, still dazed. I got out of bed and looked around. I recognized the room. I was in the building owned by the University of Truth and Justice in Prague. Had I ever left Prague? I suddenly realized that I had no clothes on. Lady Rudolphine burst out laughing again at the look of total confusion on my face. Strangely enough, I felt no embarrassment standing stark naked in front of this old lady who was, after all, by conventional standards, a total stranger. I did, however, look around for my clothes. They were lying on a chair, neatly folded. I picked up my boxer shorts and sniffed incredulously. They smelled clean. After consecutive days on which I had been kidnapped, freed, tied up, and trapped in strange confabulations, the smell of clean clothing wafted into my amazed nostrils like the aroma of freshly baked bread, like good dry champagne after a wine tasting orgy, like an unexpected blessing.

"They certainly are efficient around here," Lady Rudolphine remarked as I got dressed. "I gave our clothes to be laundered just yesterday afternoon and here they are, cleaned and pressed."

"Yesterday afternoon?" I asked, a sock in one hand. "But we only got here last night."

"The night before, my dear. You slept a whole day. Thirty hours to be exact."

"That's a new record!" I exclaimed, impressed with myself. "My longest sleep until now was sixteen hours."

"This doesn't qualify as a record." Lady Rudolphine smiled. "It was drug assisted."

"It was? What drug? Who drugged me? When?"

"I did. Before you slept. How does your forehead feel?"

I raised a hand to my head. "It feels frozen," I said in bewilderment. "It's like ice." I sat down again and mechanically put on my socks. "Did you inject me with a sleeping pill?"

"What an extraordinarily stupid thing to say. But I won't hold it against you," Lady Rudolphine promised kindly. "I just rubbed your forehead with a lotion called Lethe. You feel all right, don't you?" I nodded stupidly. "Good. Quite a few people have allergic reactions to it. I was taking a slight chance."

"What does this lotion do?"

"It does many things in the right hands. You have only just begun the river ride."

"The salty river!" I cried. "But the river was my tears..."

"Did you see Anastasia?"

"She seemed so blank. And then I was fighting with Axel but somehow when I stopped fighting, I won." I shook my head in confusion. "No, it doesn't make any sense... But how do you know what I felt in my sleep?"

Lady Rudolphine gave me a long cool stare. "You boasted yesterday that you were an expert sleeper. You merely meant that you lie in bed with your eyes closed and snore for too long. But I, on the other hand, really am an expert in in all kinds of sleep."

I hung my head for a moment. Then my instinctive inquisitiveness overcame me again. "Where did you get this drug?"

"In Amsterdam. But you cannot get it in any hashish bar or coffee shop even in that pleasant little town. Someone makes it to my specifications."

"Hans van der Annersvoort," I suggested, more out of curiosity than certainty.

Lady Rudolphine probed me again with her scalpel stare. I tried not to look away. After a while she smiled and shook her head. "Anastasia was quite right," she murmured. "You really are full of surprises. Where did you hear that name?"

"From a friend of mine," I replied. "He's an underground drug designer in California and he told me that this Annersvoort is one of the best in the world."

"Van der Annersvoort," Lady Rudolphine said, correcting me in the disinterested tones of someone who has just been reminded of a very distant mutual acquaintance in the course of idle chitchat at a cocktail party. I had obviously stumbled onto a secret of vital concern. "What is your friend's name?"

"Well, I call him Sleaze but his name is actually Luke Leazy."

Lady Rudolphine nodded almost imperceptibly. "What a very peculiar name. No more questions for now," she said, putting a restraining finger to my lips. "I too must dress. Be a dear and respect an old lady's modesty. Go upstairs and look around for Pipi, will you? I need her for a little while."

I obediently left the room although I didn't for a moment believe that Lady Rudolphine had ever had any modesty either in her wild youth or her dangerous old age: the only use to which she put her fig leaf was to tickle her lovers in unmentionable places. Why had she ended our conversation just then? I tried to think but I had more pressing concerns: I desperately needed to take a leak. Even though one doesn't drink anything in one's sleep, thirty hours in bed places a considerable strain on the bladder. It was with a sigh of relief that I found and used the facilities, but my relief was replaced by concern when I discovered that my scrotum had the same dry icy feeling as my forehead. Clearly Lady Rudolphine had other reasons besides hygiene for insisting that I remove my boxer shorts before I went to bed and I could only fervently hope that her mysterious lotion, Lethe, didn't make things shrivel up and fall off.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 40

Otto decided that we had to leave Himmelsberg before the Cardinal and his cronies returned with some evil new scheme up their clerical sleeves. Leaving Saure behind as a caretaker, Hell, Pipi, Lady Rudolphine, and I set off in Pipi's Range Rover, weary wanderers in the winter night, cascading down treacherously icy switchbacks, taking shortcuts straight down mountains when Hell was driving, because, showing a chivalrous side I had never suspected, he insisted on taking turns with Pipi at the wheel, or perhaps, he was just showing off to her, and it worked, judging from Pipi's ecstatic squeals when she was pushed up hard against the old rake as he accelerated through tight curves, oblivious of the blaring horns, audible curses, and angry glares of white-faced truckers forced to swerve out of the way of this maniac in the luxurious tank... And then the short wait at Munich airport, all glass and white metal pipes and frosty efficiency, and the plane ride back to Prague, back to the slovenly little terminal with its lackluster lighting and single creaking conveyor belt and luggage trolleys with stuck wheels and unsmiling customs officers in drab olive polyester, an hour by plane and forty years back in time, back to the dingy days of post-war, of black markets and the occasional luxury of an American cigarette or candy bar, and I began to understand why Hell, after a life misspent in the academic fleshpots of the West, might have wanted to return to Prague, to live again amidst these shabby baroque palaces and picturesque lanes, driven by a nostalgia for his youth, for the days when, as a young soldier, army cap perched cheekily on his brilliantined head, he wandered around the town, getting drunk, picking fights and picking up girls, already forgetting the adrenalin-laced boredom of the fight behind him, still ignorant of the long exile that lay before him, blithely unaware of the plots and struggles which would transform him into the grim terrible old man who sat before us now in his office at the University of Truth and Justice, having one last nightcap.

"Did the Cardinal really poison Ludi?" Pipi asked breathlessly.

"Through Dr. Dufarge and his Zurich clinic. Utterly unscrupulous man. Does whatever his confessor tells him to do. Ludwig began to suspect poison when his arthritis mysteriously turned into cancer."

"Why would the Cardinal want to get rid of Ludwig?" Lady Rudolphine asked reasonably.

"Wants to become Pope. Don't ask me why. Hotline to God and all that."

"But how was Ludwig an obstacle to the Cardinal's ambitions? What was all that about the Himmelsberg legacy?"

"Control over the lineage."

"Lineage? You mean..." Lady Rudolphine's eyes widened.

"The Cardinal and his friends have been playing the long game. Anastasia and her boy," Hell replied incomprehensibly.

"I don't get it. What does..." Suppressing a gulp, I continued, "What do Anastasia and her son have to do with the Cardinal's ambitions of becoming Pope?"

Hell and Lady Rudolphine exchanged meaningful glances. "It's a long story, dear," Lady Rudolphine replied gently. "Did Anastasia ever mention the circumstances in which she... conceived Ulrich?"

"She said that she had been raped. When she was sixteen," I said, faltering.

"Exactly," Lady Rudolphine said. "Her rapist and future husband, Axel von Schadenfreude, is, literally, a bastard. He is the natural son of Franz Jozef von Gapsburg. Does the name mean anything to you?"

"Professor Hohenstaufen mentioned him once. Something to do with the Holy Roman Empire. But what does that have to do with Anastasia?" I protested. "The Holy Roman Empire is history!"

"Some people don't think so," Hell observed quietly.

I gaped at him. "They want to bring the Holy Roman Empire back?" All my acquired Amerikan sensibilities were outraged. "But what about democracy?"

Hell barked a laugh. "Ask Hohenstinken what he thinks about democracy." He looked at me with irritated pity. "Look, young fellow, you're not in Kansas anymore."

"And you're not the Wizard of Oz either," I retorted hotly. I'd be damned if I'd let Hell treat me like some hayseed hick hillbilly. I cherished my cosmopolitan credentials almost as much as the clarity of my complexion. "So young Ulrich inherits Himmelsberg. How does that help the Cardinal restore the Holy Roman Empire?"

"What if we told you that Anastasia was raped on purpose?" Lady Rudolphine asked. "That Axel had been programmed to rape her?"

"Lady Rudolphine, I've heard a lot of weird things in the last two months but this is just too ridiculous! Why couldn't Axel just give her flowers and seduce her nicely?"

"You met Axel," Lady Rudolphine replied. "Did you feel that giving a girl flowers was quite his style?"

I grimaced as I gingerly touched Axels' shaving job on my chin. "I take your point. But still, why would anyone get Axel to rape Anastasia?"

"Fetch the Almanach de Gotha from the library," Hell abruptly ordered.

I shrugged sulkily. I hadn't slept in three days and my nightcap was already turning into a hangover. In my swimming head swam an excruciating vision, the freckled face of a young girl with curly red hair pinned under a hard heavy male body, struggling, squirming, screaming, trying desperately to break free. Bitter tears rose to my eyes and I dragged myself out of my seat: I did not understand the gibberish Hell and Lady Rudolphine were babbling, but I had to get to the heart of the matter if only so that I could recover the only person in the whole wide world who mattered to me anymore, my sad sweetheart, Anastasia. It was three in the morning and the library was closed but it didn't matter: I would coax, bribe, or kill to get in, to find this book, to force Hell to explain, to torture the Cardinal, to murder Axel, if anything could bring her back to me I would do it.

As it happened, Annichka was on night duty at the reception desk, Annichka of the short dark curly hair and the adorable dimples, and she was glad to see me, and trustingly she held out her porcelain cheek for me to kiss, and gave me the key to the library without any questions. I could steal as many books as I wanted. "Where have you been all this time?" she squealed. "Will you stay here now?'

"I don't know, Annichka," I answered heavily.

"Don't you want to play with crayons with me? You promised."

"I did, didn't I?" I sighed. A sudden longing almost bowled me over as I stood there: I desperately craved to lie on a floor with pieces of paper and brightly colored crayons spread out everywhere, a yearning for silly laughter and chocolate milk...

"And you were going to get drugs for me," Annichka pouted. But then she smiled, showing rows of shiny milk teeth. "It's okay. Whenever you get them. I'll wait. But hurry!"

I grinned back at her. "Don't worry. I haven't forgotten." I leaned over the counter and kissed her again out of sheer gratitude: embroiled against my will in these grown-up games of conspiracy, murder, and rape, I had almost lost touch with childishness.

I went to the library, found the heavy volume for which I had been sent, returned the library key to Annichka (and kissed her again), and then went back to Hell's office. Pipi was emitting lady-like little snores on the couch. Lady Rudolphine and Hell broke off an animated conversation when I entered the room.

"Took your time," Hell said grumpily as I laid the huge tome on his desk. "Look up the G and T's."

I flipped through the studbook until I got to the section on the higher German nobility. I whistled in surprise. I had never realized how many ancestors Anastasia had.

"Look for a Ferdinand von G and T who died around 1820," Hell ordered. I climbed up the intertwined branches of the interminable family tree until I found the name. "Whom did he marry?"

"Francizska von Gapsburg. But what does all this..."

"How many times after 1820 does a G and T marry a Gapsburg?"

I sighed and bent over the book. "Six. But what does..."

"See any pattern?"

I looked blearily at the book. "Every second generation," I mumbled. "But what..."

"Who do the G and T's marry between each marriage to a Gapsburg?"

I bent my head again. "Another G and T," I exclaimed.

"What was Anastasia's mother?"

"You told me that she was Prince Ludwig's first cousin. Lady Rudolphine left Prince Ludwig because he had an affair with Anastasia's mother. But was Prince Ludwig programmed too?"

Hell turned to Lady Rudolphine. "You answer that."

"I am not possessive," Lady Rudolphine said quietly. "One has affairs. And marriages come and go. But I had to leave Ludwig when he raped Agnieszka..."

"What?" My startled cry rang out like a scream. Pipi turned in her sleep and moaned, an oddly lascivious sound of torment and languorous delight that sent fragmented flashes flickering through my mind, the freckled face of another young girl with curly red hair pinned under a hard male body and when the man turned I saw that he was Prince Ludwig, younger, harder, and his handsome face was twisted in an arrogant snarl, and then they were riding in some verdant landscape, and there was a small child, and these pictures were like clips of a black and white movie I had never seen, odd images like memories which I had never known of a life I had never led, and I wondered dully why I once again tasted the warm salty taste of blood on my lips...

"I tried to understand why it disturbed me so much," Lady Rudolphine continued. "Incest holds no taboo for me. Agnieszka was only fifteen but I had made love when I was as young and I was hardly an innocent even before that. Nor was she, for that matter, as I later heard," Lady Rudolphine said drily. "I only realized years later what had disturbed me so. It was the look on Ludwig's face as he raped her..." I shuddered. Lady Rudolphine nodded again. Her eyes were fixed on my face but they seemed to see something very far away. "Ludwig was never a soft man, but his hardness was honest, even refined... But that day when I heard the screams and went to see what the matter was, I stood transfixed at the door because he wore a face I had never seen in all the years of our marriage, a face full of rage and cruelty and animal greed, positively bestial..."

"You saw the family genie," Hell growled.

"That was what I thought." Lady Rudolphine answered. "But after Anastasia was raped by Axel, I began to wonder..."

Hell shrugged. "Same blood."

Daylight was beginning to seep through the curtains in Hell's office and through my thick skull. "Otto," I gasped. "Is this all part of some program to breed..."

"The next Holy Roman Emperor," he confirmed. "The Cardinal and his friends have been at it for quite a while. Centuries. Ludwig began to suspect that he had been used. Made him furious." Otto yawned and rose heavily to his feet. "Talk about it tomorrow. Time for bed." He frowned at Pipi's supine form. "I'll take care of her," he said. "You sleep with Rudi."

I looked at Hell in confusion and then at Lady Rudolphine. She smiled at me invitingly. "I don't understand," I faltered.

Lady Rudolphine glided across the room and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her bright blue eyes probed mockingly into mine. "Don't worry," she purred. "You will."

"Do I have to?" I stammered.

"Why, of course you do." Lady Rudolphine raised an eyebrow. "It's part of the anti-plot. Don't you want Anastasia back? Well, then. Trust me."

I sighed and followed her meekly. Plots make strange bedfellows.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 39

After Anastasia's abduction and the dramatic events that had followed after, I still remained incapable of speech or deed: I was paralysed, a dull spectator in a tense theater.

"My dear, we really must leave now," Lady Rudolphine Bing said gently to me. "The Cardinal and his henchmen might come back at any moment. Drink some brandy."

I heard the words. I knew what they meant. I even knew that I was supposed to answer. But I was incapable of reply. I had to be very careful. The pain in my chest was so intense that I had to watch every breath. I was standing high, very high, precariously, on a tight rope, cradling an infinitely fragile and awkward object in my arms, and I could neither stand still nor walk, and if I fell and the object broke, something terrible would happen, because the fragile thing I was holding was my shattered heart...

I had never before realized that heartbreak is not a metaphor, a convenient figure of speech to use in chaffing conversation with old girlfriends, but that it is a literally true expression of a physical reality. The rending pain in my chest was certainly not metaphorical. It was all I could do to stop myself from screaming aloud at the agony. My head was spinning and I saw little stars before my eyes, cold stars, distant and cruel, mocking my anguish with their indifference. I felt oddly lucid. I knew I was about to faint.

"Drink this," a brusque voice commanded. I gritted my teeth and opened my eyes. Otto Hell stood before me, holding a tumbler full of brandy. With great effort I stopped myself from throwing up. I shook my head from side to side. "Goddamn it, you young fool, drink it, I say!" Hell shouted angrily. I groped for the glass and poured the brandy down my throat. The acrid fumes rose to my head and choked me. I spluttered and coughed. Tears ran down my cheeks. I felt slightly better when I opened my eyes. Hell was still standing there, scowling at me. "Thought I'd told you to follow orders," he said, still angry.

"I don't work for you any longer," I replied hoarsely.

"You'll do what I tell you and you know it."

I looked at Hell sullenly. A sharp anger rose in me with the last brandy fumes. "Who the hell are you to give me orders?" I asked wildly. I closed my eyes. "Goddamn murderer..." My voice trailed off drunkenly.

A strange grating noise roused me, like a rusty chainsaw rasping against sheet metal. Hell was laughing. "Shock therapy. How's your heart?"

I blinked. Hell was right. I was still in pain like I had never felt in my life, a dull bruised ache which permeated every tissue and muscle in my body as though I had been beaten to a pulp, ruthlessly, but the sharp vice around my heart seemed to have disappeared, at least for the time being. On the other hand, I no longer had the hopeful sense that I might die at any moment. I stared at Hell without gratitude. "Just who are you, Lord Hades?" I demanded again, coldly. "How do you know how I feel? And what makes it your business?"

"Told you to call me Otto," Hell replied, glaring at me. "And you know damn well who I am. At least you should. Maybe you would know if you could drag yourself for just a moment out of the nice cozy little mire of self-pity in which you are wallowing." I glared back at him, stung. "Young swine!" Hell bellowed. "Get out of the mire before you drown! There's work to do! Or have you already forgotten Anastasia? Don't you want to see her again? What were her last words before Axel took her away? `Unless'? Unless what?"

I saw the error of my ways and leaped to my feet. I wanted to salute but it seemed too ridiculous. Neither of us was wearing uniform. "What did she mean, Otto?" I asked eagerly. "Unless what?"

"Can't tell you," Hell answered moodily. "Got to figure it out for yourself."

I felt like hitting him. But then I realized that he was right. It was up to me to save Anastasia. What was I to do? Where should I even begin? I sat down and plunged my head in my hands again. It was all too hopeless. I wished I were back in Mongolia.

"Bet your grandfather would tell you the same thing. Begin at the beginning. First of all, stop whining and start thinking," Otto said grumpily. I gaped at him. How the hell did he know...

"What you were thinking?" Hell asked, a wicked glint in his nut-brown eyes. Pipi sidled up to her new fiance, curled about his elbow, and offered him another enormous snifter of cognac. "Later, girl," he said gruffly, taking the cognac without looking at her. "No time for fun. Yet. We've got work to do first." Pipi purred and rubbed herself against him.

I gazed at Hell as though I were seeing him for the first time. The stumpy bent old figure, the dewlapped wrinkled face, the deep grouchy voice, the careless eccentricities of dress, these features with which I had become familiar, and therefore blind, in the days when I worked for Hell at the University of Truth and Justice, stood out for me now in bold relief like a mask painstakingly wrought by the anonymous artisans of an ancient people, and I felt like one of those civilized nineteenth-century barbarians who wrote learned monographs about these peoples but who were too blind to feel the elemental potency of the tribal divinities whose images they took back to their sterile museums and condescendingly labelled primitive art. In that grumpy face, that crusty voice, those hooded eyes, I now saw to my awed amazement a spirit who could never be blinded by the illusory phantasms of desire and fear, untouched by cowardice or greed, ageless, stern, and very noble. Hell was a well too deep for me to plumb yet, but I was content to lower myself into its dark depths and to learn.

"You're already learning," Hell muttered.

I gaped again at the old devil. Ever since we had first met, I had uneasily suspected that Hell could read my mind. Of course, it made communication that much easier. But did I really want my life to be an open book?

"Otto, was that really Axel von Schadenfreude who abducted Anastasia?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"She's his wife, ain't she?"

"What will he do to her?"

"How the devil should I know?" Hell growled. "Only met the feller once. Too churchy for me. Probably make her wear ladylike clothing and drag her to mass every Sunday. Force her to kiss the Pope's hand at glittering Vatikan receptions and to be polite to everyone. Make her clean the house."

"Not that!" I was appalled. I could not imagine a worse torture for my darling witch. I was sure that Anastasia would have preferred to burn at the stake, suffering abominably and yelling foul curses at all around. "How do we get Anastasia out of Axel's clutches?"

"Probably clutching her body right now," Hell said viciously. "Making up for all the years of sexual deprivation ever since she left him."

I yelped in anguish at the thought. Lady Rudolphine looked concerned. "Must you be so graphic, Otto?" she chided.

"He'll make her wear modest cotton pyjamas," Hell continued remorselessly. "Force her to brush her teeth. First prayers. Then sex. She will be constantly pregnant."

"Stop it!" I shrieked, stopping up my ears. "Nobody could be so cruel!"

"He's a good Catholic. He can afford it."

"How can I save her?"

Hell shrugged. "Could try prayer."

"Never," I declared fervently. "But I'd sell my soul to the Devil..."

A broad grin creased Hell's old brown face. "You already have. Let's get to work."

I gulped down the rest of the brandy straight from the bottle and rubbed my hands. I felt the flush of energy which only anger and strong liquor can produce. I was ready for battle. "Where do we start?"

"Good question." Hell looked at me and stayed silent.

I scowled at Hell. He was obviously not going to make this any easier for me. I took a deep breath and dived into a churning whirlpool of feelings. My emotions jostled like snakes in a basket. I nearly gagged as I made contact with my worst fear but held on, drawing it out like a writhing eel, slimy, repulsive, terrifying. "Oh fuck."

"Go on."

"It's my fault, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"Anastasia's kidnapping. It's my fucking fault."

"How?"

"Axel didn't come here tonight to stop Prince Ludwig's suicide. He came with his men because he knew Anastasia was here. Who told Axel?"

"Ludi didn't," Pipi said helpfully. "He was talking to me about money all day long."

"None of the servants would have told Axel," Lady Rudolphine said slowly. "They are all devoted to Anastasia. And the Cardinal arrived too late to have given Axel enough warning."

"I made a phone call before dinner," I said in a strangled voice. "I called my friend Floss in England. I told her where I was. Godfrey must have overheard. He works for the British secret service. But why would he have told Axel?"

"Does this Godfrey work for Killjoy-Yuck?" Hell asked. I nodded. "Well, then. There we go. The circle squared, our question answered. That fellow has a great deal to answer for."

"Terence told Axel?" I was baffled. "But why? What's the connection between an Oxford don who works for the British secret service and an ultra-Katholic German publisher?"

"My enemy's enemy is my friend," Hell replied calmly. "Guess whom they both can't stand?"

I sighed. "Xox?"

Hell nodded. "Too many plots, too few targets," he replied mysteriously. "Let's get back to Prague and do a little research."