“Is there something wrong with your throat, Lipotin? Since when have you had it?”
“Oh, that? Er, that means ...” – a terrible coughing intervenes, then he continues, exhausted: “That means nothing, or very little. You will recall my friends in Tibet? Well then, you will remember what I told you about them,” and again he makes the same unmistakable gesture with his hand across his throat as he did outside the cemetery gate.
The red scarf!
“Who cut your throat?” I stutter.
“Who other than the red butcher? A ruthless fellow, he is. Tried to kill me on orders from his paymasters, but in his frenzy his tiny brain forgot that I have never had blood in my veins. He sought recognition for his act, but in vain. He scotched the snake instead of killing it ...” the rest of his speech is veiled by the dry whistling of his breath in the tube. “You must excuse the leaky organ-pipes,” he says, when he has got his breath back, and gives me a polite bow.
There is nothing I can say. On top of it all I can sense the pale face of the Princess listening outside the grimy window and I have to strain my nerves to fight off the icy cold creeping over me from behind. Quickly I invite Lipotin to sit down in the chair where the Princess usually sits in the rather foolish hope that Assja will not enter if she sees her chair occupied. I feel I could not stand the presence of two ghosts at once. My one comfort is the thought that I myself must still be alive, otherwise I would not be so clear in my mind that these two are not. But Lipotin seems to be able to read my mind, for he says:
“Can you not see, Sir, that neither of us is far enough advanced to be sure whether we are dead or not? No-one in our situation can know that. There is nothing to prove it. The fact that everything around us appears the same as before: is that proof? It might be an illusion. How can you be sure that the world you knew previously was not just as much a figment of your imagination? Are you really absolutely sure that we did not die in the accident at Elsbethstein as well and that you just imagined your fiancée’s funeral? That could be the case, could it not? What do we know of the cause of our imaginings? Perhaps imagination is the cause and mankind the effect! No, no, all that about ‘life after death’ is rather different from what we are told by people who know nothing but, when you contradict them, claim they know ‘best’. Lipotin lights another cigarette and I squint over at him to see whether smoke comes out of the red scarf ... Then he goes on in his croaky voice:
“Actually you should be grateful to me. It was in your service, after all, that I got this little scratch. Or did I only imagine that you made use of the drug from the Tibetan monks. As a member of the order I should have stopped that happening. Well, we have both ended up with wounds that heal damned slowly! Yours is not in the throat, but in the nerve centre which controls your sleep: the valve will not close properly, that’s why you don’t know whether you’re dead or not. Don’t worry, it’s not just a physical defect, it’s also an escape route to freedom.”
I have also lit a cigarette; inhaling the smoke helps me control the feverish dread inside ... I hear myself ask:
“Tell me honestly, Lipotin, am I a ghost or not?”
He puts his head to one side; the heavy lids almost close; then he sits up with a sudden jerk and says:
“The only ones who are not ghosts are those who have eternal life. Do you have eternal life? No, what you have is the same as all men: infinite life, and that is something quite different. – But I think it better if you stop asking me about things which you cannot understand until you possess them yourself. You can only understand something that you already have. Asking questions never did anyone any good! What you really want to know is how to deal with phantoms!” As he speaks he gives a quick glance at the window and waves his arm in a circular movement. It creates a draught, and the dust swirls up from the papers on my desk, releasing a musty, ancient odour that sets off images in my mind of crows flapping up from carrion or of great grey owls in ivy-clad towers.
“Yes, it is true, Lipotin,” I admit. “It’s no use trying to hide it from you – I do deal with ghosts ... That is, I see – here, in the chair you’re sitting in – a figure ... it appears every day ... I see the Princess! She comes to me whenever she wants. She haunts me with her eyes, her body, her whole being! She will trap me in her web; – as the thousands of spiders catch the flies here. Help me, Lipotin! Help me, help me not to ...”
Like a dam breaking, the words just burst out of me, unprepared and unexpected; I am so overcome that I slide to my knees beside the chair the old Russian is sitting in and stare at him through a veil of tears as if he were some powerful, mysterious magician.
He slowly raises his left eyebrow and inhales so deeply that I can hear the whistling in the tube again. He wheezes softly as great clouds of smoke mask his features:
“But, my dear Sir, I am entirely at your service; of course,” – an uneasy glance flickers in my direction
