To make matters worse, at that moment Lipotin gave me a sideways glance which seemed to say that his antiquarian’s instinct permitted him to read my thoughts with a fair degree of clarity. This only served to increase my embarrassment, but fortunately the Princess did not seem to notice and interpreted my blush as the after-effects of drowsiness.
Suppressing a mischievous grin, Lipotin helped me out of the awkward situation by asking the Princess whether it was the inspection of her unique weapon collection which had so exhausted me; given the multitude of amazing treasures it contained, he could well understand how I felt. The Princess denied this with mock desperation and laughed, what on earth could Lipotin be thinking, she had not had time to get round to it and, anyway, she hardly dared ...
That was my cue to restore my somewhat damaged reputation, and I begged her, with Lipotin’s support, to be allowed to see what I had heard described as a fabulous collection. Jokingly I offered to allow her to put my attentiveness to the severest test: I would follow the most abstruse exposition of the most recondite facts in a field where my own knowledge was superficial in the extreme ...
The Princess acceded to my request and so, laughing and joking, we went back through the inner rooms to one, obviously in another wing of the villa, which stretched out before us like a gallery.
Between the glass cases the walls shone dully with the metallic gleam of countless suits of armour. Like the empty husks of insect-men they stood in a long row, as if vainly waiting for a shouted order that would bring them back to life. Around them and above them were burgonets and tilting helms, chain mail overlaid with gold and silver thread, damascened breastplates, artfully riveted scale armour – most, as a quick glance told me, of Eastern European or Oriental origin. It was the fullest armoury I had ever seen, full, above all, of richly ornamented weapons encrusted with gold and jewels from a Merovingian skramasax to Saracen shields and daggers of the best Arabian, Sassanid and Thracian swordsmith’s work. The overall impression was strange, fantastic; in spite of its ordered rigidity, it somehow seemed alive, threatening, as if the weapons gleaming from the walls were beings in suspended animation. But even stranger and more fantastic to me was the sight of the owner in her fashionable dress passing elegantly amongst all these instruments of murder, commenting knowledgeably on this or that piece. A lady, a fickle woman – the passionate custodian of a chamber full of instruments of torture and death! However, I had little time to indulge in these thoughts. The Princess sustained a fluent stream of conversation about her late father’s passion for collecting and her own. She kept on pointing out priceless rarities, though, of course, I can remember only a few. What I do remember is that the collection did not seem to be organised according to the usual principles. The eccentric old Prince had obviously been particularly keen to acquire weapons whose value lay in their origin or in some story connected with them. He must have become fascinated by historical, not to say legendary, curiosities: there was Roland’s shield and Charlemagne’s battleaxe; on a cushion of purple velvet lay the lance of the Centurion Longinus from Golgotha; there was the magic dagger of the Emperor Sun Chiang Sen with which he drew the line which no Western Mongol dared to cross and along which later emperors built the Great Wall – to their own glory, as it was unnecessary given the existence of the magic boundary. Glittering cruelly, there lay Abu Bakr’s damascene blade, with which he had beheaded the seven hundred Jews of Kurayza without pausing once to draw breath in the course of his bloody work. Thus the Princess showed me a seemingly endless hoard of the weapons of the greatest heroes of three continents or of such as were associated with blood, horror or the most fantastic stories.
Again I soon began to tire. I felt stifled by the ghostly aura of these mute and yet so expressive objects. Lipotin must have noticed, for he turned to the Princess with an ironic smile:
“After the grand tour round this veritable Aladdin’s Cave of marvels, perhaps, Princess, you would like to acquaint our long-suffering friend with the gap which is your secret sorrow, the central point – the vanishing point, if you like – of the whole, magnificent collection? I think he has earned the right.”
I had no idea what Lipotin was talking about, and even less about what he and the Princess then whispered and muttered to each other in a hurried exchange in Russian. When they had finished, she turned to me with a smile:
“You must excuse us! Lipotin is pressing me to tell you about the spear ... the spear I assumed was in your possession – you remember? I think it’s time I gave you an explanation, isn’t it? Of course it is! I hope that when I have told you about what Lipotin calls the ‘secret sorrow of the Shotokalungins’ you will perhaps ... you will, after all ...”
Once more my throat tightened at the thought: they were going to start their little game about the mysterious spearhead again; and that might bring back all the rather dubious events of this afternoon. I pulled myself together and said, in as expressionless a tone as possible, that I would be happy to hear her explanation.
The Princess led me over to one of the high, glass cabinets and pointed to an empty case lined with velvet and just long enough to take a twelve-inch dagger. She purred:
“You will have noticed that every item in the collection has a card in Russian next to it – my father took care of that – which records its origin and story. You don’t speak Russian, so all I need to say is
