At the peak of our union, in my mind's eye I saw stars explode and universes come into being, saw my beloved as a saint surrounded by a glowing halo racing through the cosmos and floating toward me, saw ourselves, as if crazed, perform an ethereal dance, saw ourselves create billions upon billions of Felidae who in turn populated billions upon billions of galaxies and then copulated with one another to create on their part further members of my kind, thus passing on and on the sacred creed, eternally and endlessly, never giving up, without an end, until we would all become one with the unknown power that had created us. I felt that this union was completely different from every one that had preceded it in my life. At the moment of ejaculation, she let out a ringing scream, and we exploded away from another. My vision vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a faint afterglow.
Immediately, she turned around and attacked me. She hit out at me wildly, her claws spread, and screamed loudly. I retreated in a rush to a corner, cleaned myself, and watched her lust slowly cool. Now she was rolling fiercely on the floor and purring.
"Who are you? What race are you?" I finally burst out, my curiosity having gotten the better of me.
She smiled coldly and knowledgeably, her pupils narrowing to slits because of the harsh sunlight; only the unfathomable yellow of the iris was visible.
"Race! What an insular and antiquated concept. Does it really matter what race I belong to?" she snarled. Then she rolled over and began cleaning her other side as well.
"No," I replied. "Nothing at all is important. I merely wanted to know with whom I'm speaking."
"I'm not a member of any race if that answers your question. Your lover is just the way she is, Francis."
"You mean that your race is new?"
"Not new, but old! Or, to put it better, old and new—and different! Figure it out for yourself."
"How did you know my name?"
"A little bird told me."
"And what is your name?"
"I don't have a name," she said with a mischievous giggle. "No, that's a lie of course. But my real name wouldn't mean much to you anyway because you're not in a position to understand its meaning."
"What game is this? Twenty questions?"
"Exactly, my dear. But don't rack your brains about it. Someday everything will become clear all by itself. And trust me, everything will have a happy ending."
She stretched herself sensuously and excited me anew. The whole game began again from the beginning. Her charming singsong was as bewitching as it was the first time, and I forgot the many questions I still wanted to ask her.
We dedicated the entire morning to love and lust, getting each other worked up into greater and greater raptures. Although the competition left me in peace during these pleasurable hours, strangely enough no second passed without the troubled feeling that we were being observed during our erotic gymnastics. There was no reason to say whether this suspicion was justified or not, because whenever I stole a paranoid glance around me, there was no one to be seen. In retrospect, my erotic adventure with that strange beauty seems like yet another dream—an exceedingly beautiful, but also rather bizarre dream.
When evil-looking clouds shooed away the sun at noon, she left me to vanish in the thick jungle of the backyard gardens. I was so drained and tired that I could no longer summon the strength to follow her. She, however, had just commenced her "wedding party," and would be celebrating through many days and nights to come. The fact that in that condition the fangs of the omnipresent murderer might find her neck did not occur to me then, and so I didn't alert her to the danger. The reason I was so frivolous remains a mystery to me. Perhaps, as I thought later, she didn't look like a typical victim.
I dragged myself back to the apartment, and my first move, while Gustav looked on disapprovingly, was to ram my belly full with a hearty portion of fish. He had just gotten out of bed and made my breakfast, so my escapade must have escaped his notice. Yet his expression was as sour as a lemon, and clearly betrayed his revulsion at the penetrating aroma that every cell of my body exuded. Finally, shaking his head in disgust, he blathered something about "taking a bath" and "actually known to keep himself compulsively clean," then marched back, grumbling, to his high-nutrition muesli with homemade wheat germ—one of the innovations in his life I detested (and believed would quickly pass) that Archie had suggested. We wouldn't have to put up with him today, thank God, because Gustav, at least on Sundays, took a break from work. After my meal, I went straight to the bedroom and within seconds drifted off on my cushion into dreamless sleep.
"Do I at least know the babe?"
Bluebeard must have been watching over my bed for some time already, because when I opened my eyes, there he was, stretched out on the floor, yawning. Gustav had probably let him into the apartment, and Bluebeard had taken a little nap. I could make only a poor estimate of how long I had slept, but supposed that it was now late afternoon. I glanced at the window and saw that the snowfall I had predicted had come to pass. Behind the windowpanes, a dense veil of hazelnut-sized snowflakes shimmered, falling from a steel-gray sky. Bluebeard slid restlessly back and forth, nervously licking his right back paw.
"I hope you know her," I said, "because she could bring us a little bit closer to solving this case."
He assumed a sulky expression,
