Trickster

Chapter 4. The Doll of Maternal Love

There was not in the whole world a city so poisoned by the stench of oblivion and so given over to rot as that in which Kazimir dwelt. The air in its quarters, narrow and writhing like worms, was thick and heavy, saturated with the exhalations of the swamps that spread beyond the city’s bounds, and with the miasmas rising from the very soil, like the breath of an ancient, sickly monster. The houses, built of stone blackened by time and damp, stood hunched beneath a perpetually gray, low sky; their pointed gables and narrow windows, like embrasures, seemed to gaze upon the rare passerby with mute reproach and secret menace. Kazimir himself, whose soul had long since become a receptacle for all the poisons and melancholies of this sorrowful place, wandered these little streets at that hour when day, no longer able to resist the onslaught of twilight, expired in death agony, staining the mist in crimson and lilac hues.

He walked without seeing the way, for that way was known to him to the last crack in the cobblestone, to the last patch of mold on the wall; he walked, obeying a certain inner pendulum that counted in his breast even, monotonous beats, akin to the beating of a heart, but which were, alas, merely a pitiful semblance thereof. His thoughts, those eternal companions and tormentors, whirled in his skull, now returning to the spectral successes of days gone by, when he, a sorcerer and virtuoso of illusion, commanded the attention of the crowd, now plunging into the abysses of his present downfall, when his sole audience was the spiders weaving their webs in the corners of his wretched dwelling. And in the very thick of this gloomy kaleidoscope there suddenly arose, as if a specter summoned by the force of irrepressible recollection, the image of Ilona.

Ilona! This name, like a white-hot blade, pierced his being, awakening a dormant but unquieted pain. It was a wound inflicted upon his pride, his self-love, his very essence — a wound that had never truly healed, but was merely covered by a thin, cobweb-like film of oblivion, ready to tear at the slightest touch. She, whose beauty had once seemed to him the only light in an ocean of darkness, she whose vows he, in his blindness, had esteemed as eternal as the motion of the stars — had preferred to him a wealthy patron, a man flat as a board and empty as a dried gourd, but whose purse was weighed down with gold, and whose lineage traced its roots to hoary antiquity. She had sold their love, their shared dreams, their mad, poetic vows given beneath the whisper of the night wind — sold them for the vain glitter of diamonds and the heavy brocade of gowns.

And so, at the very moment when the thought of her, burning and poisonous, reached its highest intensity in his brain, fate itself, mocking and cruel, resolved to present him with the living embodiment of this specter. From around the bend of a street narrow as a dagger, toward him, rolling soundlessly on wheels upholstered in black velvet, there emerged a carriage. The carriage was familiar to him — he had seen it once at the entrance to the theater, on that very evening when his own life had rolled downhill. The heraldic sign on the door — an owl clutching a serpent in its talons — had engraved itself upon his memory with the same distinctness as the brand of an executioner. And while he stood, pinned to the spot by sudden torpor, the door opened, and from it, like a vision born of the mist and his own despair, She stepped out.

Time, which for him, Kazimir, flowed slowly as molasses, leaving upon all things the imprint of decay, seemed to have no power over her. The features of her face, refined and beautiful, had preserved their delicacy, but now there appeared in them a new, cold completeness, like that of a finished marble statue. A gown of dark blue velvet, trimmed with silver fur, clung to her figure, emphasizing her belonging to a world inaccessible to him. In her ears sparkled sapphires, as dark and deep as her eyes in that moment when they met his gaze. And in those eyes, in their depths, he saw something that made his petrified heart throb convulsively once more. He saw fear. The old, familiar, childish fear of his caustic tongue, of his merciless intellect, capable with a single word of destroying any illusion, of exposing any falsity. This fear flickered in her gaze for a moment — a swift, frightened shadow — and was immediately suppressed, hidden beneath a mask of cold, almost contemptuous courtesy.

«Monsieur Kazimir,» she pronounced, and her voice, once as clear and melodious as a brook, now sounded even and dull, like a blow upon taut silk fabric. «What an… unexpected meeting.»

He did not answer at once, allowing the oppressive pause to fill with all the unspoken that hung between them like a poisonous mist. He savored her embarrassment, this moment of her weakness, for he saw how the slender fingers in their gloves clenched the silk reticule, and how a faint, barely perceptible tremor ran across her icy mask.

«Madame,» he finally uttered, and his own voice seemed to him hoarse and alien, coming from some deep sepulchral emptiness. «This meeting is as unexpected as it is instructive. It presents living proof of how whimsical are the ways of providence, which brings together on a narrow path the inhabitants of such different worlds. The world of illusions, which I, alas, still serve, and the world… of solid prosperity, which you have chosen.»

He deliberately emphasized the last words, and the fine venom contained in them achieved its aim. A faint flush, unnatural and bright as a consumption spot, appeared on her pale cheeks.

«You are just the same, monsieur,» she said, and in her voice was heard an old grievance mixed with vexation. «Still loving to play with words, as a conjurer plays with cards.»

«Ah, madame!» he exclaimed with feigned pathos, inwardly exulting at how easily he had managed to wound her. «Cards may foretell fate, but words — merely expose it. And is it not amusing that we two, who once read the same book of life, now find such different meanings on its pages? You have found your quiet, well-ordered garden, while I… I have remained to wander through windfalls and wastelands, where my only companions are phantoms and shadows.»

He saw how she longed to break off this torture, to turn and leave, to hide in the safety of her rich carriage. But the conventions of society, that very cage into which she had voluntarily locked herself, held her more firmly than any chains. She was obliged to listen to him, obliged to keep face. And this humiliation, this forced standing before him, this pariah, this beggarly genius, was sweeter to him than any honey.

«I will not take up your time,» she said, taking a step toward the carriage, and in her eyes again flickered that very fear, but now seasoned not merely with embarrassment, but with hatred. «Good fortune to you, Monsieur Kazimir.»

«And to you, madame,» he replied with a low, theatrical bow. «I wish that the walls of your garden may always remain sound, and its flowers — never wither.»

She quickly vanished into the dark maw of the carriage, the door slammed with a dull, final sound, and the carriage, like a specter, dissolved into the thickening twilight. Kazimir stood motionless, listening to the fading clatter of wheels, which echoed in his ears like the strokes of a funeral bell. But what were they burying? Not love, for that love had long been dead, and its decay he had inhaled with full breast all these years. No, they were burying the last remnants of his former «I,» the last faint stirrings toward something bright that might still smolder in the depths of his soul.

This meeting, so sudden and so painful, split open the old wound of his self-love with new, unprecedented cruelty. He felt the poison of humiliation, of thirst for revenge, and of bitter triumph spreading through his veins, poisoning every particle of his being. Simply to take revenge? No, that was too petty, too primitive for his mind, sophisticated in the art of inflicting suffering. To kill? That was crude, material, and devoid of that refined cruelty he so valued. He required something greater. Not merely to strike a blow, but to humiliate her in the most exquisite manner; to crush not the body, but the very soul, to disgrace her in the eyes of that very world for which she had betrayed him; to shatter that very «sound garden» of which he had spoken, tearing out by the roots all the flowers of her reputation and trampling them into the mud.painful, split open the old wound of his self-love with new, unprecedented cruelty. He felt the poison of humiliation, of thirst for revenge, and of bitter triumph spreading through his veins, poisoning every particle of his being. Simply to take revenge? No, that was too petty, too primitive for his mind, sophisticated in the art of inflicting suffering. To kill? That was crude, material, and devoid of that refined cruelty he so valued. He required something greater. Not merely to strike a blow, but to humiliate her in the most exquisite manner; to crush not the body, but the very soul, to disgrace her in the eyes of that very world for which she had betrayed him; to shatter that very «sound garden» of which he had spoken, tearing out by the roots all the flowers of her reputation and trampling them into the mud.

And standing there, solitary and majestic in his downfall, amid the dying day and the rotting city, Kazimir felt how in his consciousness, illuminated by a flash of infernal inspiration, a design was being born. A design so monstrous, so beautiful in its devilish completeness, that his lips curved of themselves into a smile devoid of all warmth, the smile of a demon who has found the key to the most secret gates of human suffering. He knew how he would do it. He would turn to the most sacred, the most inviolable thing in any woman’s life. He would turn to her mother.devilish completeness, that his lips curved of themselves into a smile devoid of all warmth, the smile of a demon who has found the key to the most secret gates of human suffering. He knew how he would do it. He would turn to the most sacred, the most inviolable thing in any woman’s life. He would turn to her mother.

The thought, dropped into the fertile soil of his grievance, sprouted with the swiftness of a poisonous mushroom that appears overnight on swampy ground, absorbing all the miasmas of decay. Not merely revenge, but revenge clothed in the form of a higher, sacrilegious justice — that is what this plan promised him. To humiliate the daughter, one must defile the mother; to stain the honor of the living, one must invoke the shade of the deceased. For Ilona, with all her cold haughtiness, came from a family whose reputation was as impeccable as it was fragile, resting upon the strict principles and piety of her parent, Madam Matrona, who had departed this world two years before this fateful day.

This Matrona, whose stern visage Kazimir remembered with the same distinctness as that of her daughter, was a woman of iron and prayer book. Her faith was not a warm, life-giving light, but a cold, inexorable flame of an inquisitor’s pyre, turned both outward and inward. She had erected around her family a fortress of dogmas and proprieties, and through the embrasures of this fortress she gazed upon the world with suspicion, seeing in every person a potential tempter, and in every joy — a sinful snare. It was she, as he suspected, who had played no small role in Ilona’s decision to reject him, a poor artist, a man without clan or tribe, whose life was one continuous carnival, and whose craft — a sinful lie.

And so, to shatter the fortress, he resolved to turn its own citadel into an instrument of destruction. He required the soul of Madam Matrona. Not metaphorically, but in the most palpable, monstrously material form, to place it, like poison, into the mouth of a soulless doll.

The cemetery where this stern Matrona had found eternal rest lay on the very outskirts of the city, there where the little streets had quite lost their coherent form, sprawling into a squelching, miry swamp. It was old, abandoned, given over to oblivion, like all that could no longer serve the vanity of the living. Its fence had sagged and become overgrown with moss, the stone slabs, undermined by damp, sank into the earth like ships mired in a quagmire, and the air above it was motionless and thick as oil, and it smelled of rotted leaves, wet clay, and something else, sweetly putrescent, that defied definition.

Kazimir arrived there at that hour when the moon, pale and sickly, only occasionally broke through the torn coverings of clouds, casting upon the ground spectral, wavering patches of light. In his hands he carried a small but heavy bundle wrapped in black velvet — his future marionette, the doll that was to become a sarcophagus for an alien soul. He stepped among the graves without feeling the earth beneath his feet, for his entire being was taut as a bowstring ready to loose an arrow into the very core of darkness. At last he found what he sought: a massive tombstone of black marble, upon which the inscription could still be made out: «Matrona von Walter. May she rest in peace.» These words seemed to him the height of hypocrisy, for peace was precisely that which he now intended to violate.

He did not resort to the aid of a crowbar; the physical desecration of the grave was as repugnant to him as it was unnecessary. His instrument was will. His ritual — the concentration of all the poisonous forces of his soul. Unrolling the velvet, he drew out the doll. It was not a refined porcelain young lady, but something far simpler and therefore — dreadful: a wooden figure, roughly carved, with a faceless oval instead of a face, dressed in a dark, severe gown cut in the fashion of some twenty years past. It was empty, mute, and passive, an ideal vessel, destined to be filled with bitter, resisting contents.

Having placed three black candles upon the grave slab, he lit them. The flames did not waver but stood steady and motionless, like three burning eyes gazing from the netherworld. Kazimir dropped to his knees, cradling the doll in his arms, and fixed his gaze upon that point in space between the candles, at the very center of the triangle formed by their sinister light.

And he began his summons. With quiet, shattering insistence, with an inner pressure emanating from the very depths of his being. He did not utter incantations from old books; he created his own black liturgy, addressing the shade of Matrona, calling to her by the power of his unanchored will. He reminded her of her earthly cares, of her pride, of her fear of sin; he tugged her from non-being with the sharp hooks of her own unrelinquished attachments and grievances.

And for the first time in all his practice of these repulsive mysteries, something went wrong.

Usually the souls he summoned were weak, bewildered, passive; they clutched at the form offered them like a drowning man at a straw. But Matrona’s soul was different. She did not come at his call but resisted him with a strength that plunged him into amazement and chilling horror. He perceived her as a dense, resilient, repelling substance that did not wish to leave its cold repose. In the air, though it remained motionless, an invisible pressure arose; it became difficult for him to breathe, as if grave earth had compressed his own chest. The candles did not go out, but their flames shrank, darkened, and became like three drops of molten tin.

«You will enter!» Kazimir hissed, and in his voice there sounded for the first time not all-conquering confidence, but a ferocious, almost desperate resolve. «I command you! You will serve me in death as you did not serve in life!»

He intensified the pressure of his will, concentrating it into a single ray, sharp as a steel needle. He mentally drove it into that invisible barrier separating him from the soul of the deceased. And then he felt pain. Genuine, physical pain. It pierced his own being, as if that very ray he emitted had struck resistance and, rebounding, had plunged into himself. His head was clamped in a vise of unbearable migraine; an ache arose in his bones as if he had lain upon damp stone for long years; a deafening noise rose in his ears, in which mingled the ringing of bells and a death rattle.

This was her will. The will of a fanatical, unbending old woman who even beyond the bounds of being refused to submit. She defended herself, and her defense was terrible, for it was founded upon the very thing that had made her so impregnable in life — upon a blind, uncompromising faith in her own righteousness.

But Kazimir was possessed. The pain he felt only inflamed his fury. He did not retreat. Instead, he changed tactics. If he could not draw her to himself by force, he would break her resistance by the very same method by which wild beasts are broken — through pain and fear. He began to attack. He imagined his will — a heavy, blunt hammer — crashing down upon that invisible essence. He envisioned her spectral bones breaking, her mute soul screaming, her spiritual fortress cracking and crumbling.

And with each imagined torture he inflicted upon her, a responding wave of pain rolled back upon himself. He shuddered, his body covered in cold sweat, his teeth clenched to the grinding point. He was breaking her, but he himself was also being broken. It was a battle of two obsessions, a collision of two indomitable wills upon the fragile bridge between worlds, and the price of victory in it was mutual annihilation.

At last, when it seemed to him that one more moment of this confrontation would tear him apart, he felt something give way. That resilient, repelling force weakened, wavered, and with a dull, inner crack, as if a branch of a century-old oak were breaking — collapsed. Something cold, swift, and bitter as wormwood surged from the point before him and burst into the doll he clutched in his arms.

The wooden figure suddenly jerked in his hands, like a body convulsing in death agony. Its head fell back, and upon the faceless oval, at the place where the mouth should be, a slit appeared, from which burst forth the unbearable sensation of a soundless scream. Then the doll froze.

Kazimir, barely breathing, gazed upon his creation. His triumph was poisoned by exhaustion and by that infernal pain still ringing in every nerve. He had by force, literally breaking her will, installed Matrona’s soul into this wooden sarcophagus. But he felt — she had not submitted. She was broken, but not conquered. She lurked within, like a prisoner in a cell, filled with hatred and horror.

He brought the doll to his face, peering into its unseeing eye sockets.

«Now you will speak,» he whispered hoarsely. «You will speak that which I command. You will confess that your daughter is a sinner, born not of a lawful husband, but of a secret lover. You will disgrace her with the name you so zealously guarded in life.»

The doll was silent. But in its silence he sensed a tense, furious resistance. He had forced it to accept form, but had not wholly subjugated its will. And in this incompleteness of victory, in this broken but unyielding spirit, lay the seed of future calamities. But Kazimir, intoxicated by his imagined triumph and his thirst for revenge, rejected this quiet, warning voice. He held in his hands not merely a doll. He held in his hands a bomb whose clockwork mechanism had already begun its countdown.

And so the day came when the sun, as if ashamed of what it was destined to illuminate, hid behind a solid, leaden ceiling of clouds, and the world was plunged into a dismal, gray half-light, so consonant with Kazimir’s designs. The main square of the city, ordinarily noisy and motley, at that hour seemed unnaturally hushed, oppressed by the weight of the impending act; even the cries of merchants and the ringing of bells sounded muted, as if coming from behind a thick glass wall. The very air, damp and motionless, was like a funeral shroud thrown over the city.

Kazimir chose for his performance a place beneath the shade of an ancient cathedral, whose Gothic spires, like the withered fingers of a skeleton, thrust against the low sky. Here, in a niche between two columns, he erected his little theater — a plain screen of wood darkened by time, behind which he hid himself and his dreadful accomplice. Against the backdrop of the cathedral’s monumental grandeur, his little booth seemed insignificant, pitiful, like a pustule on the body of a giant, but it was precisely in this insignificance that its power lay, for evil, as is known, takes root most firmly in the small and inconspicuous.

He did not announce his performance loudly; he had no need of a crowd, he needed a single spectator. He knew that at this hour Ilona, following her established routine, was returning from morning mass, and her path inevitably led through this square. And so he began without unnecessary words, without barkers. From behind the screen, faint and quavering at first, there floated a melody he drew from a tiny music box that resembled a coffin. The melody was old, pious, the very one often sung in churches some twenty years ago; a melody that the departed Matrona undoubtedly knew and loved.

Gradually, like flies to honey, idlers began to gather at this strange, incongruous sound. First children, then servant girls with baskets, then idle strollers and old men seeking any diversion to while away the tedious hours of the fading day. They gathered in a semicircle before the screen, in silent bewilderment, for they saw neither puppeteer nor bright scenery — only the dark rectangle of the screen and that painfully familiar church hymn.

And then, in time with the music, from behind the edge of the screen, slowly, almost hesitantly, a doll appeared. It was dressed in a dark, severe gown, its hair drawn back in a tight bun, its posture straight, almost rigid. In its appearance, in its static pose, there was something indefinably familiar to some of the old-timers, something that made them experience a vague, inexplicable unease. Kazimir, invisible as a demon standing at the left shoulder of a sinner, controlled it with the greatest care. He did not make it dance or perform pirouettes; it simply sat there, at the edge of the screen, motionless and majestic in its silence, and this contrast between the living, trembling music and its deathly stillness was in itself deeply disturbing.

And at that very moment, as he had foreseen, from the doors of the cathedral emerged Ilona, accompanied by her maid. She walked with her head slightly bowed, immersed in her thoughts, perhaps in her worldly cares or in prayerful serenity. Her steps were measured and full of dignity. She had almost crossed the square when her hearing, as well as that of all those gathered, was struck by a voice.

A voice emanating from the doll.

It was not loud, but piercing as a fine awl; not coarse, but dreadfully familiar. It was the voice of Matrona. Not an exact copy, but its essence, its spectral imprint, deprived of warmth and flesh, but preserving all its merciless, sharp clarity and that particular metallic intonation with which she had pronounced her moral teachings.

«Stop, my child,» the doll pronounced, and its faceless wooden visage seemed to turn toward Ilona.child,» the doll pronounced, and its faceless wooden visage seemed to turn toward Ilona.

She froze in place, as if taking root in the stone slabs. At first her face reflected only simple bewilderment, then — swift, instinctive recognition, and finally — a slowly mounting, all-consuming horror. She stood, unable to stir, unable to utter a sound, staring at this wooden likeness of her mother, from whose lips poured that very hated and beloved dead speech.

«I call to you from the darkness in which I dwell, to lift the heavy burden from my soul,» the doll continued, and each of its words, wrung out and suffered through by Kazimir’s will, fell upon the square like a stone into water, spreading in circles of sepulchral silence. «The burden of the lie I carried within me in life. The burden of the sin that has settled upon our family.»