Хайнц Лихберг - Lolita

“‘By God, woman,’ howled one of them, ‘speak once more or you will go to hell, you and your thrice-accursed beauty.’

“She fell forward laughing onto the table, and cried with streaming eyes, ‘I will love, yes, I will love the one who has the longest and ugliest beard!’

“Long red hair shot out of the men’s faces, and they emitted insane animal cries of rage and despair. With upraised fists they faced each other. Then the woman tried to run away.

‘But in a moment the two of them fell on her and she was strangled between their long, bony fingers.

“I was unable to move a muscle, my spine turned to ice and I forced my eyes shut. When I opened them again I saw that the two men in the next room, gazing down on the result of their rage were Anton and Aloys Walzer. I fainted dead away.

“When I came to the sun was already streaming into my room, and the door to the next room was shut. I rushed to opened it and found everything just as it had been before. But I remember thinking that the fine layer of dust I had seen before on the furniture was gone. And I could smell the faintest hint of wine in the air.

“A few hours later I went outside into the street and found Severo pale and in distress coming toward me. There were tears in his eyes.

“‘Lolita died last night,’ he said softly.

“I don’t know how to explain what those words did to me, but if I could it would be a sacrilege to speak of it. My beloved little Lolita lay in her narrow bed, her eyes wide open. Her tears had collected on her lower lip and her fragrant blond hair lay in confusion.

“I don’t know the manner of her death. In my fathomless dismay I forgot to ask. There was a little cut on the brown left arm — but that surely did not kill her. She did that to turn a white flower red — for me.

“I shut her tender eyes and hid my head in her cool hand — I don’t know for how long.

“Eventually Severo came in and reminded me that the steamship that was to take me to Marseilles would be leaving in an hour. So I left.

“When the ship was far from shore I recognized the outline of Santa Barbara, and it occurred to me that this angular castle could now be looking down on a small beloved body being laid in the earth. My heart had never felt such a yearning and I beseeched the towers ‘Send her my love, send her my love before she is gone — and forever, forever.’

“But I took Lolita’s soul with me.

“Some years later I returned to the old south German town. In the Walzer’s old tavern, there now lived an ugly woman who dealt in seed. I asked after the brothers and found out that they were both found dead in their easychairs by the stove on the morning that followed Lolita’s death. They were smiling.”

The professor, whose gaze blindly strayed on his dish as he spoke, looked up. The Countess Beata opened her eyes. “You are a poet,’” she said and the bracelet on her delicate wrist clinked as she gave him her hand.