The Angel of the West Window

lock clicked open. I entered the garden. There was already someone waiting to receive me under the frosted glass roof of the little porch. It must have been the refracted light, falling from above through the milky glass that gave the servant’s hands and face such a ghastly blue colour – I said to myself to calm my shock at the sight of the man in the dark Circassian costume. His face had an unmistakably Mongolian cast; the eyes were scarcely to be seen beneath the lowered lids. To my question as to whether the Princess was available he said nothing, just gave a jerky nod, inclined his upper body, crossing his arms over his chest in the Oriental manner – all as if he were a puppet with someone above him pulling the strings.

Then the livid, corpse-like gatekeeper disappeared behind me, and I entered the dimly-lit hall where I was received by two further figures, who silently appeared, took my coat and hat and, like well-oiled, functional automata, sent me on my way like a parcel. “A parcel” – I felt as if I were the incarnation of the image I had recently used in my log book as a symbol of man’s life on earth.

Meanwhile one of the two Kurdish demons had flung open the double door and, with a peculiar movement of the hand, invited me to proceed.

“Is that really a human being?” – it seemed a mad question to ask oneself, but as I walked past the bloodless, clay-complexioned figure I caught a whiff of the grave – a zombie?! I rejected the crazy notion immediately; of course it’s quite natural that the Princess, coming from the East herself, should have old Mongolian retainers, perfectly trained ... ‘automata’. I must be careful not to put a romantic gloss on everything, not to let my imagination see dangers where there are none.

Whilst these thoughts occupied me I was ushered with deep bows through several rooms of such ordinariness that I can remember nothing about them. Then, suddenly, I found myself alone in a room furnished in the oriental style; walls and floor were covered with costly oriental rugs, low cushions were strewn everywhere and at every step the foot sank into rich furs: the whole effect was more like the tent of a nomad prince than a German suburban villa, but that was not what gave the room its particular atmosphere.

Was it the tarnished weapons that bristled from every fold of the wall-hangings? You could see straight away that they were not mere decorations brought in by some interior designer: they were visibly flecked with blood and still gave off a faint bitter odour of their cruel use, weapons still quivering with the sound of dark betrayal, merciless butchery and senseless slaughter.

Or was it the contrasting functionality of a huge bookcase which took up one whole wall and was full of old volumes bound in leather or vellum? On the top shelf stood a few bronze heads, black with the patina of age: half barbaric gods, from whose obsidian black faces eyes of onyx and moonstone stared down at you with a demonic glitter.

Or was it ...?

In one corner, behind me, as if it were guarding the door I had just come in through was a kind of altar in black marble overlaid with matt gold laquer. Above it was the statue of a naked goddess in black syenite, not much over three feet tall: as far as I could tell it appeard to be Thracian work, possibly with some Egyptian influence, representing the lion-headed goddess Sechmet, or Isis. The feline face with its evil smile was remarkably alive; the excellently done female body was realistic to an obscene degree. As an attribute the Cat Goddess held in her left hand an Egyptian mirror; the fingers of her right hand were curled round empty space – clearly they had originally held some second attribute, now lost.

Closer inspection of this strangely beautiful and, for its semi-barbaric Thracian origin, artistically outstanding object was made impossible by the arrival of the Princess, who suddenly appeared, as silently as one of her Kurdish zombies, from behind one or other of the Persian wall-hangings.

“Our connoisseur of art indulging his critical faculties again?” her voice purred in my ear.

I swung round.

Assja Shotokalungin certainly knows how to dress! She was wearing a short dress in the latest fashion, but I have no idea what kind of material could produce this effect of darkly glinting bronze; it was too dull for silk, for linen too metallic. No matter; she looked like the Cat Goddess in front of us, clad in a translucent metal skin, which suggested with every movement of her body the voluptuous curves of the stone goddess brought to sensuous life.

“A favourite piece of my late father’s,” she purred. “The crowning point of many of his studies – and of mine. I was my father’s pupil.”

I trotted out the usual banalities in praise of the stone goddess, of its owner’s scholarly researches, of the strange fascination the statue seemed to exert, all the time aware of the Princess’ smiling face before me – and of something else: of some indistinct feeling, some vague, half-remembered torment which I kept trying to force into the clear light of consciousness as I was speaking. It kept flitting past my eyes like a waft of grey smoke, shadowy, impalpable ... One thing I felt sure of: this need to remember was in some way connected with that statue; absent-mindedly my glance kept settling on it, trying to suck the mystery from it. What words I mumbled to the ever-smiling Princess I can no longer remember.

Whatever I said, she took me in her usual charming fashion by the arm, chaffing me gently about the eternity it had taken me to return her visit. No trace of any barbed hidden reference to the unfortunate scene between us. She seemed to have forgotten it, or never to have