How strange that she does not seem to know that she herself is the other Assja as well. Seeking help from her other self, she abandoned herself completely to me ...
Then just as suddenly the succubus disappeared. My body felt drained and wretched, as if I had participated in unimaginable dionysian orgies which could well have lasted a year as one night. But I forgot my physical state as I was engulfed in melodies from an Aeolian harp; they accompanied words which ran through my blood like some sweet poison. Then, like a childhood song, my veins tingled to a verse which I could no longer get out of my mind:
From out of the waning moon
From the silver black of the night
Look down on me,
Look down on me
Lady, bless me with Thy dark light
Come to me, Lady, o come to me soon ...
The lines were still tripping from my untiring lips when Lipotin appeared at the foot of my bed. He stretched his red-scarfed neck like a thirsty stork, and waited and nodded and smiled.
Then he started to speak, softly; the words in the tube sounded like lead shot dribbling onto a sheet of glass and there was an audible hiss of air from under the scarf:
“Hmm, well, my friend, well well – we were the weaker after all?! I am sorry, sir, I am truly sorry; but I can only serve the strong. You know that is one of my little peculiarities. I regret I must return to the opposing side. All I can do is to inform you of that fact. You will appreciate what that token of loyalty means. I see that according to popular wisdom you are ‘lost’, but nevertheless I congratulate you on your ... hmm ... performance. And now I must say farewell; business calls, I think. The rumour in the coffee house is that some rich foreigner from Chile has bought Elsbethstein. Perhaps there are other old daggers buried there? They say the new owner is someone called Doctor Theodor Gärtner; personally I have never heard the name. And now, dear sir” – he waved – “fare thee ill.”
I was incapable of standing up, I was incapable even of answering. He paused in the doorway and I read, rather than heard, the words from his lips: “The Dugpas send their greetings”; then he gave a ceremonial bow and as he disappeared I saw a glint of mocking, satanic exultation in his eyes.
That was the last I saw of Lipotin.
“Theodor Gärtner!” – Those were the first words in my mind when I surfaced from unconsciousness. Theodor Gärtner? But he drowned in the Pacific! Or am I mad and Lipotin named a completely different name? Weak and dizzy, I collapsed back onto my bed several times before I finally managed, with a supreme effort, to get to my feet. I was convinced that I had lost the contest and was damned beyond redemption, destined for some unknown fate – unknown and therefore all the more gruesome to my imagination. For a brief moment I saw the death mask of my cousin, John Roger, hovering over me.
Oh, how easily, how ridiculously easily Black Isaïs had overcome me with her satanic cunning!
There is no need for me to describe the depths of humiliation I felt, the mortification of pride in my manly strength and, worst of all, the consciousness of my own boundless stupidity.
Should I call upon Jane? I felt my own heart pleading to do so, but I mastered myself and remained silent. She might hear me after all, and I felt I should not disturb her in the realm of eternal life. I might wake her from a dream of eternal union with me, my cry for help might drag her from her sphere far down into the misery of finite being, down into the force field of the earth where love is nothing and hate everything.
I sank back onto my bed and lay there motionless, waiting for night. The sun shone into my room for a long time, and more brightly than usual, so that I thought: would I were Joshua and could make it stand still. – –
Again around the second hour of darkness Assja lay with me and everything was as it had been the night before – I even deceived myself that I was her saviour.
My senses belong completely to the succubus. In the desperate battle of my soul and my reason with the seductress of my drugged senses I tasted all the pain and torment that hermits and anchorites submit to, right to the bitter end when either the vessel is shattered, or God himself breaks open the prison. At the very last moment God broke open my prison. I will tell briefly how that happened, but first I went through hell.
Assja Shotokalungin came in all shapes and forms – even by day – with all the seduction of her untamed soul and with all the ravishing power of a majestic nakedness which grew ever more radiant and unearthly.
Assja Shotokalungin was everywhere. After wearisome trials I found the words of exorcism which banished her from my presence and she left me with the sad expression of a misunderstood lover, no reproach, only a mute plea for forgiveness in her eyes. It took me an immense effort of will to harden my heart and ignore the pleading look.
But soon after that she manifested herself in every object in the house which had a reflecting surface: in the varnished wood of the wardrobes, in a glass of water, in a polished brass knife, in the dull, opalescent windowpanes, in a gleaming decanter, in the cut-glass chandelier and in the glaze of the tiles round the stove. My torment increased a hundredfold, for Assja seemed