Trickster

Kazimir, standing behind the screen, in the sticky half-darkness, savored every moment of this infernal spectacle. He saw how the blood drained from Ilona’s face, leaving it deathly pale, how her eyes became glassy, how her lips began to tremble finely. He felt the doll’s resistance, its dull, desperate unwillingness to pronounce the words, but his will, like a white-hot crowbar, pried open this spiritual armor, tearing from the depths of an alien soul the words he needed.

«I was a sinner,» the voice from behind the screen proclaimed, and in it sounded genuine, terrible torment, for it was the torment of a violated will. «I broke my vow. You, Ilona, my child, were born not in lawful wedlock, but from a secret liaison of mine with a man whose name I shall carry with me to the grave. Your father, whom you revere, is not your father by

The silence on the square became absolute, ringing. One could hear a sparrow fly past, hear the rustle of the maid’s dress as she recoiled from her mistress. All gazes, full of amazement, horror, and greedy curiosity, were fixed now on the doll, now on Ilona. A society lady, a pillar of propriety and virtue, had turned out to be… illegitimate. The fruit of sin. The living embodiment of the lie of her own, so revered mother.

Ilona’s face became distorted. This was not merely a grimace of shame or grief; it was the face of a person from under whose feet all the earth had been torn away, all supports had collapsed, the whole world had crumbled to dust. In her eyes was read not only incredible humiliation, but the collapse of her entire life, all her convictions, her entire personality. She had been publicly exposed, disgraced, trampled in the most terrible of possible ways — by the voice of the one whose opinion had been law to her. She stood, defenseless and naked before the crowd, and Kazimir, observing this through a narrow

But precisely at this moment of highest exaltation something occurred. His gaze, sliding over Ilona’s distorted face, mechanically shifted to the doll, to that wooden visage turned toward her daughter. And he saw that which could not be, which should never have been. On the polished, lifeless cheek of the doll, directly beneath the bead of its eye, there glistened a tiny, perfect drop. A drop of moisture. It hung for a moment as if hesitating, then rolled down, leaving behind a thin, barely noticeable damp trail.

It was a tear. A real, salty, human tear.

An icy hand clenched Kazimir’s heart. His triumph was instantly eclipsed, giving way to a sensation of monstrous, incomprehensible error. How? The soul was a specter, the marionette — wood and rags. Whence a tear? This was a violation of all laws, both physical and those governing his gloomy art. It was a sign, a sign of genuine, unfeigned suffering that had broken through the barrier of death and violence. It was the tear of a mother gazing upon the torments of her child.

And at that very moment when his reason, having rejected the impossibility of this phenomenon, attempted to comprehend it, he heard. Within his skull, in that part where thoughts were born and where his own «I» dwelt, a sound rang out. Quiet at first, barely distinguishable, like the rustle of dry leaves. But it grew, acquiring form, clarity, meaning.

It was laughter.

Not his own, born of gloating or madness. It was alien laughter. Female. Gentle, almost tender, and therefore — a thousand times more spine-chilling. It was full of an infinite pity and mockery simultaneously, surpassing all understanding. It sounded as if someone very ancient and very wise were observing his triumph and seeing in it a pitiful, childish amusement doomed to a swift and terrible end.

Kazimir sharply recoiled from the screen, nearly overturning his little theater. He pressed himself against the cathedral wall, wildly looking around, but there was no one, only stone walls and his own fear, suddenly become alien. The laughter ceased as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind only a ringing emptiness and an absolute, impenetrable certainty: he was not alone in his consciousness. Something had entered there. Or… he had himself admitted someone.