The Fourth Circle Read online

  The only hint that something unusual was in the offing was the sudden wriggling of the otherwise immobile baby, whose indifference to the outside world is such that even Sri might envy it. Against the latter's explicit instructions, I approached the baby just as its large eyes opened wide, and for a moment I had the idiotic impression that I was looking at the spitting image of a tiny Sri. Its gaze roved over the edge of the crib, and then it started to make incomprehensible throaty sounds, the first I heard from it besides ordinary crying.

  I just stared stupidly at it, not knowing what it was trying to tell me or what to do. The throaty tirade suddenly stopped, and the baby's face lit up with a smile of pure pleasure. I responded instinctively and beamed happily back at it: how could I not? This was, after all, the first two-way communication that my baby and I had ever had.

  Unfortunately, the contact lasted only a short time; a moment or two later the smile disappeared from the baby's face, replaced by its usual expression of dull indifference to the outside world. Joy was still strong in me, however, and I addressed Sri in a happy voice, wishing to give him the glad tidings and completely forgetting in my excitement that our relations had cooled, but his usual insensitivity quickly brought me back to earth. His lordship was sitting, legs crossed under him, deep in meditation in a corner of the temple from where he rudely flapped a hand at me, signaling that he did not wish to be disturbed.

  My throat constricted and in all likelihood I would have burst into tears, if I hadn't just then succeeded in reestablishing contact with the baby, this time in a completely new way. I distinctly felt its presence where I thought nobody would ever penetrate, at the very heart of my most private being: at the center of my mind, not at all like an intruder, but rather as an extension of my own personality.

  There it created an easily recognizable picture from my everyday life—that of the clearing in front of the temple.

  There was not enough time to be frightened by this strange experience because just then another, more acute fear came over me. The clearing was not empty as by all accounts it should have been: a tall, strongly-built stranger in a long orange robe just like Sri's was in the act of crossing it.

  At first I panicked, confronted by a swarm of questions to which I had no answers, but then my protective instinct went into overdrive. Ridding my mind entirely of the baby's presence—or maybe it withdrew by itself, I don't know—I turned all my electronic senses on the intruder who was now advancing toward the entrance to the temple. What my sensors informed me brought me no comfort; quite the contrary.

  Not only did all the data provided by the scans add up to a picture that certainly did not fit the usual measurements of a human being, but I suffered a major shock when I saw the visitor's face. Naturally, I recognized him at once: how could I ever forget?

  All fingers and thumbs, I almost started to shout a warning to Sri, but stopped myself at the last moment. What could I have told him? That the obstetrician from my dreams—the man whose crumbling statue takes up half the inside of the temple—was on his way here? Impossible! Sri thinks, in any case, that I'm not entirely sane—and who knows, after all that's happened to me, his opinion may not be entirely unfounded. If I told him anything of the kind, he'd certainly switch me off forever. On the other hand, if I didn't speak up, if I let Buddha walk quietly into the temple and take him by surprise, then I'd really be for it.

  The situation seemed hopeless, and every further step taken by the orange-robed figure increased my fluster and panic. Then Providence came to the rescue, with an amazing outcome that left me utterly confused.

  Sri did not need any warning—or had the baby intervened in his mind too? In any case, he stood quite calmly at the temple door, as if he had been expecting this visitor, and gave him one of his friendliest smiles, something I had long been sure I would never again see on his face. I can hardly remember the last time that he bestowed this rare honor on me. But who am I, after all, to warrant anything of the kind?

  Without exchanging a word, they went over to the corner of the temple where Sri had until just now been sitting cross-legged in meditation. Now both assumed the same position and remained silent, their heads bowed. The recent experience with the baby led me to think for a moment that their silence might be only apparent, but try as I might, I could not discern any trace of mental communication between them, while the baby again retreated into its Down's Syndrome torpor and so was of no use at all. I was alone.

  The perplexity that had filled me till then began to give way to another feeling: anger. If the baby's reticence was understandable, the attitude of the two men was lacking in the rudiments of common courtesy. Neither perceived the need to explain anything to me, which good manners toward a lady, to say the least, would demand, if nothing else. But who can expect gentlemanly behavior in the middle of a jungle? Let's not delude ourselves.

  Totally inconsiderate, they sat like that for hours, without saying a word, and I finally understood why most women despise chess. Nothing makes you feel so neglected and rejected as two males selfishly engrossed in a game of chess in your presence. (As if they had the foggiest notion of the game in the first place.) All right, Sri, you asked for it. If you don't feel the need to say something to me, I won't say anything to you, although I would have a thing or two to tell you if I chose. I might, for instance, report to you that your tubby new friend did not arrive at the temple alone. Oh no. He has a surprise for you under that garish robe. Two surprises, in fact. I wonder how well the sturdy indifference you're so proud of will stand up to a reunion with that pair of four-legged little horrors you once parted from with such difficulty....

  2. INTO THE KINGDOM OF THE UNDERWORLD

  MY TINY HANDS reached forth for my mother's—but this fluttering movement, inspired by the purest of desires, was not destined to achieve its noble end.

  For the shaking of another, huger hand, roughly seizing my old shoulders, tore me away from the blissful dream, just as I came within reach of a balm with the power to heal all the suffering of my weary soul and body ravaged by the passing years. Flushed with wrath at the violent disruption of my dream, the sweetest I had ever dreamed, quite blind with fury, I angrily opened my eyes to look upon the villain who so arrogantly dared to tear me away from my mother's dear embrace, elusive though it might be, for some trifling and meaningless need of his own.

  So vast was my impotent rage, that in my paroxysm the question of who might have come nigh while I slept in the darkness of the cellar under the iguman's residence flashed only belatedly into my mind. I had been alone there when, an unknown number of hours ago this night, I dropped into sleep to seek illusory salvation. One of the robed ones, surely, inhibited by fear and trembling, had unwillingly come to bring me a frugal meal or some order from the bewildered iguman whose holy House of God had been transformed overnight into a mustering place for the most unclean of all forces? Or could it be—and here my rage quickly lost its earlier ferocity—a new uninvited visitation, come to addle with perverse marvels what little sense remained in my grey head?

  This fearful thought, icier than the cold before dawn, chilled me for a moment, and miserable and cowardly again, I longed to return to my warm dream, to seek once more the protection of my mother's lap, not to open my wrinkled eyelids.

  But for me there was no going back, for the iron grip of a ruthless hand, already sending currents of pain through my shoulder, chased away the last deceitful vestiges of the comforting dream—and I had no choice but to finally open my eyes.

  Open—and see something that filled me at once with gladness and mortifica-tion. Not one form, but two, stood bent over me, faces wreathed in chaste, innocent smiles, like two angels come riding down from Paradise, the bearers of good news. I knew they were no angels because their immeasurable, blasphemous sin, in which I—still able to recall the spark-throwing, darting fire that had united their lecherous bodies into a single flame of carnal desire—also took shameful part, occurred in this very cellar, bef
ore my lustful, hidden eyes. The Master's firm grip on my painful, numbed shoulder now eased, and he extended a hand to me, exactly as had my mother in my interrupted dream, while Marya, standing on the other side, made the same gesture, but with the softness of a woman, turning to my confused face her white, velvety palm bathed in the radiance of dawn. We stood thus, unmoving, for many moments—I fogged by sleep and disbelief, not knowing what to do, whether to accept the angelic hand of which I was not worthy, or to shrink back from this new temptation of the devil. The two of them continued to smile invitingly, guided by some hidden intent that did not require any forced urgency.

  This stiff, stony posture, which seemed to have descended from one of the Master's pictures on some wall into this dark cellar where it surely did not belong, would have lasted who knows how long had not the sudden thought of my broken dream, in which I had almost reached my mother's hands, prevailed in me—so I took their outstretched ones, resigned in advance to the uncertain outcome of this imprudent act.

  At the moment of this sinful touch, there came first a prickling, then a fiery, stabbing feeling; it made the sparse white hairs below my elbows rise on my tough skin, exactly as they did in the moments of ecstasy while I was lustfully spying on their blasphemous coupling. I felt this effect most strongly from Marya, whose frail, childlike hand filled only half of mine and which, in comparison to the Master's, looked even smaller.

  Small though it was, it proved as firm as his when it began to help me rise to my unsteady legs, benumbed and rheumaticky after a cold night spent on the earthen floor of the cellar. Moreover, it seemed that an abundant invisible sap began to flow directly into my old dried-up veins, filling them with strength and vigor, which at my advanced age happens but rarely, usually following a long sojourn in the midday sun.

  I stood up firm, even joyful, no longer beset by anxieties and fears, to face the new destiny that Marya and the Master had prepared for me. Why else would they raise me from the sweetest sleep at this early morning hour but for a purpose? I assumed they intended to take me outside, despite the door's being barred. With indecorous but sinfully sweet glee, I pictured in my mind the robed ones staring unblinkingly at us and crossing themselves in the fear of God before this new miracle, which would outshine by far all the previous ones.

  But I was not destined to take contemptuous pleasure in the monach's bewilderment because Marya and the Master were guiding me in a direction quite opposite to the iron-bound cellar door, to its darkest corner, into which I deemed no beam of sunlight had penetrated since the laying of the foundation, and which must shelter a nest of the most unhallowed creatures dwelling this side of Hell.

  My pleased anticipation quickly waned at this gloomy sight, but because the flow of life-giving, joyful juices kept pouring into me from Marya's hand, forti-fying my flagging courage, I did not step back. Nothing more came from the Master, who had released my hand from his clasp to kneel on the floor in the corner where he began to cast strange spells.

  At first I thought these were acts of witchcraft to summon up evil spirits, and old forebodings filled my miserable soul. But a moment later it became clear that he was only brushing away the dirt that had accumulated there, though I could not immediately see to what purpose. Soon he had pushed the damp dirt aside, and a trapdoor could be seen, wooden and partly rotten, reinforced in places with rusty iron. Through the cracks, my weak eyes caught a muted reddish glow from below.

  Not even the secretion of propitious juices that steadily flowed through Marya's little hand into my body sufficed to keep me from shrinking from this unearthly sight. I started in terror, but Marya turned to me, then took my other hand in hers, looking so intently into my eyes with the endlessly deep blue of her gaze that I took the remaining few steps to the closed trapdoor, yielding to the inaudible command of her will.

  The Master raised his head to me once, wearing an expression on his face that I could not read, then pulling with his augmented strength, raised the sealed hatch from the floor. With a creaking of rusty hinges, it began to leave its ancient housing. A gory light spewed forth, its ominous glow filling the dark corner, accompanied by a pestilent odor that gushed up from the bosom of the underworld, filling my nostrils with the loathsome smell of excrement.

  No further doubt was possible: despite all their gentleness, Marya and the Master were but merciless executioners whom the Lord Himself had assigned to throw me alive into the jaws of hell, my only rightful place because of the countless sins in thought and deed that I had committed in life; because of my infidel doubts and perverse, filthy lusts, to which I, insolently, had succumbed in moments of spiritual weakness and carnal desire; but most of all because of my indecent, shameless spying on their act of divine union, twice sacred, which I had deceitfully thought had another purpose.

  Although forcibly thrust back from the opening by the light of the flames of hell and by noxious gusts of unimaginable decay, I summoned up my faltering will and stepped voluntarily toward the opening, to demonstrate by this final humility my belated repentance, my acceptance of this terrible punishment that the Almighty, in His infinite righteousness, had prepared for me, His poor servant.

  Yet my destiny was not to enter the eternal domain of the demon torturers below all alone, for before I had managed to lower my quivering foot into that awful abyss, the Master went first, quickly descending into the gaping hole, where he surely did not belong.

  Confused by this mad act, I turned my terrified eyes to Marya, but found that the smile still played on that angelic face. Her virginal white hands released my wrinkled ones, then laying a hand on my bony shoulder, she guided me gently in the footsteps of the vanished Master. Again I accepted her silent order with a believer's total obedience, and I started down into the chasm of Hell with mixed emotions: my earlier resignation to my hopeless fate and a new hope kindled by Marya's unvarying gentleness.

  Hardly had my head sunk below the level of the floor as I lowered myself down the wooden ladder, half-rotten as the damp trapdoor above it, than I understood from unmistakable sounds that here was another madness, greater even than the Master's: the white queen of darkness, whom I had thought was Marya, was following me down the ladder into her kingdom of the underworld.

  3. SHERLOCK HOLMES'S LAST CASE (1) THE LETTER

  "WHAT DO YOU think of this, Watson?"

  Holmes extended to me an opened envelope. It departed from the standards of the Royal Mail: elongated and bluish, it had a rectangular, not triangular, flap on its reverse side. There was no stamp or any trace of a postmark. On the front were inscribed Holmes's name and address, in neat, gently slanting handwriting with something of a tendency to ornamentation. The sender had made no effort to leave any trace of his own identity.

  Not wishing to disappoint my friend, who in circumstances like this always goodheartedly expects that I will be nearly, if not quite, as astute as he is, I held the envelope to my nose. Doing just this, he had many times gleaned precious information. I was aware of a slight, bitter smell but could not place it, though for some reason I thought of the shock to which the sense of smell is exposed upon entering a shop selling Indian spices.

  Holmes looked unblinkingly at me, with that penetrating stare of his, a stare that filled even the most confident criminals with unease and caused the ladies to squirm uncomfortably; but he remained silent, though I noticed a slight curling of the fine lines at the corners of his mouth, which I knew indicated a barely controlled impatience.

  "How did this arrive?" I asked him, taking the letter out of the envelope. It was of the same bluish tint, on stiff paper, folded in three. I did not unfold it at once.

  "Somebody pushed it under the front door. Between four o'clock, when I returned from my walk, and a quarter-past six, when Mrs. Simpson went off to do the evening shopping. She did not bring it to me immediately, but only after she had returned and served my meal. She said she thought it could not be of great consequence, since it had been delivered in this manner; in truth,
it was too much of an effort for her to climb the stairs to the drawing room a second time, though she would never admit it. I myself tend to breathe a little harder after those nineteen steps, especially when I take them at a run, while she is sixty-seven and arthritic, but that is unimportant. Come, open the letter."

  He was right about the staircase. I could still feel my heart beating faster from the climb, as well as from my brisk walk from home. It seemed that I was not exactly young myself, but the communication from Holmes had been categorical.

  "Come at once! Very urgent!" Hurrying here, even running part of the way, I imagined a multitude of troubles that might have befallen him. Thank God, all it was was an unusual letter. I was careful not to say this aloud, though; it obviously had special importance for Holmes. Why else would he have called me with such urgency?

  When I unfolded the stiff paper, a surprise awaited me: only a large circle was drawn on it. Nothing else was there—no text, no signature, no initials, nor, indeed, any sign at all. My first thought on perceiving the precision of the circle was that it must have been made with a pair of compasses, but when I looked more closely at the place where the center should have been, I could not see the little hole, which would inevitably have been made by the sharp point. Evidently, the drawing had been made with the assistance of some round object, probably some kitchen vessel; a largish cup, perhaps, or a saucer.

  "A circle," said I rather feebly, nothing more intelligent crossing my mind.