Alexei Tolstoy: Cagliostro

The news that the guests were staying quite confused all Alexei's thoughts, he began to shiver as in a fever and his hands trembled. He went into the house with his aunt and sat down on a love-seat. Fedosia Ivanovna, unable to read his thoughts, asked him if in that case they should not send to the nearest village for more blacksmiths.

"Not on any account!" Alexei shouted. "Don't you dare send for any blacksmiths!" Then he smiled suddenly. "No, Fedosia Ivanovna, let our guests stay with us for another couple of days… Auntie, I don't suppose you understood who our guest was, right?"

"Some Fenin or something."

"That's the whole point-not Fenin, but Count Fenix- Cagliostro himself!"

Fedosia Ivanovna opened wide her eyes and fluttered her plump hands. Fedosia Ivanovna, however, was a Russian woman, and so the news that they had a famous sorcerer in the house impressed her on quite a different account, and she spat angrily.

"A heathen, with no cross on him, for mercy's sake," she said with disgust. "We'll have to wash all the crockery with holy water now, and have a service sung in all the rooms… A worry we could very well do without… And she, is she a sorceress too?"

"Yes, auntie, the Countess is a sorceress."

"Why then, I guess they need quite other food, those cursed magicians… Oh, Alexis… Maybe they can't eat our food, and you never guessed… Go and ask them what they want for breakfast…"

Alexei burst out laughing, and went to the library. There, lighting a pipe, he started walking up and down the room and suddenly clenched his teeth so hard on the tip of his pipe that the amber cracked.

"I shall challenge the Count to a duel, kill him, and flee abroad with Maria," he thought, and flung his pipe on to the window-sill. "What cause have I for the duel? Oh, never mind what…"

He drew his sword out of the sheath and examined the blade. "Can I challenge a guest though?" The floorboard creaked at the back of the room where a dark-red curtain draped a niche. He quickly raised his head, but instantly forgot about the sound, for his thoughts were in a whirl. "No, I'll have to wait until they leave, overtake them beyond the river and there pick a quarrel with him." He stopped beside the window and, listening to the hammering of his heart, mentally reviewed the whole of his stroll with Maria, from the folly, along the shore of the pond, to the stone garden seat. "Oh darling," he whispered.

Breakfast was announced. Alexei awaited his guests in the dining-room. When he heard their footsteps he went dizzy for a moment. Maria walked in with lowered eyes, curtsied before Fedosia Ivanovna, and took her seat. Her face was pale and powdered, and the fire in her soul seemed to have been quenched. Cagliostro unfolded his napkin, silently gave Alexei an oblique glance, and throughout breakfast remained in a huff, chewing loudly and most unpleasantly. Fedosia Ivanovna gave Fimka her orders in a whisper, and did not eat a thing herself.

In vain Alexei tried with his hot glances to evoke a blush or even a barely perceptible movement in Maria's face: she sat like a waxen figure, and Alexei's hot glances invariably met her husband's keen, hard glances. And true to character, Alexei fell suddenly into despair.

Breakfast was over. Maria, never raising her eyes, retired to her room. Cagliostro expressed a desire to smoke a pipe with his host in the library, and stepped aside at the door to let him go in first.

Sprawling in the same armchair as he had done the night before, Cagliostro sucked wheezingly on his pipe for some time, glancing now and then from under his bushy eyebrows at Alexei who was moping at the window, and suddenly pronounced in a loud, imperative tone:

"I have thought it over and decided to carry out your wish tonight: I shall perform a perfect and complete materialization of Madame Tulupova's portrait."

Alexei gave him a startled look and ran his tongue over his parched lips. Cagliostro left his armchair and, taking a magnifying glass framed in silver from his pocket, peered at the portrait, clicking his tongue and wheezing.

Within an hour preparations were begun. Margadon took down the portrait from the wall, dusted it carefully, set it against the wall and spread a carpet on the floor before it. All the things that would not be needed were carried out of the room, and the curtains were drawn across the windows. Alexei was ordered to undress and stay in bed until dusk without eating or drinking anything.

Alexei did everything he was told. Lying in his darkened bedroom, he felt only that his head was bound with hoops of lead. At five o'clock Cagliostro brought him an infusion of rhubarb and holly, and though the taste was awful he drank it up. At seven o'clock his bowels were evacuated. At eight, wearing a loose and light robe, he went, together with Cagliostro, into the library where wax candles were burning in candelabra before the portrait, brightly illumining it.

"Do not breathe too deeply or too lightly. Your breathing must go smoothly without any yawning, gurgling, coughing, panting or sneezing, for magnetic substance cannot stand jolts."

Thus spoke Cagliostro as he seated Alexei in a low armchair before the portrait. Drops of perspiration streamed from under his wig down his red face with the twitching eyebrows. As he moved about he did not stop talking for a minute, and gave Margadon his orders by signs.

The Ethiopian took several bunches of dried herbs from a box, put them in a copper bowl, set it down on a low table in front of Alexei, then took a sort of mandolin with a long finger-board out of its case, carried it into the back of the room, then went and brought a large, thin and obviously very strong net, stretched it out on his hands, and squatted on the floor near the door.

While he did all this, Cagliostro chalked a large circle on the floor near the armchair in which sat Alexei.

"I repeat," he said. "You must strain all your imagination and picture this person," he indicated the portrait with the chalk, "unveiled, that is naked… All the details of her body will depend on the power of your imagination… I recall in 1519 in Paris the due de Guise asked me to materialize Madame de Sevignac who died from a gastric disease… I was not quick enough to warn the due, he was too impatient, and Madame de Sevignac turned out to be something like a bag stuffed with straw under her dress… I lost eight thousand livres, and it took me a great deal of trouble to drive that enraged scarecrow back into the portrait. And so, when you have very meticulously pictured the body of your heart's desire, you must picture it fully dressed, and here you must proceed without haste for, as it happened in 1251 when at the request of the widow I called out the spirit of the deceased French king Louis the Bald, he appeared with only the front of his body clothed, while he was naked behind, which caused much amazement…" Straightening up and licking the chalk from his fingers, he said: "Margadon, go and call the Countess."

He stepped back a little, measured the circle with his eyes, then bent down again and, going round the circle, chalked on it the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twenty two signs of the cabbala, the keys and the gates, the four elements, the three beginnings, and the seven spheres. This done, he entered the circle.

"You shall have a perfect example of my art," he said importantly. "Her ability to speak, her digestion, all the bodily functions and sensitivity will be just like those in a person born by a woman."

He leaned over Alexei who lay like a corpse in his armchair, took his pulse, ordered him to close his eyes, and placed his hot, fat hand on his forehead. In this moment Alexei heard light steps and the rustle of silk. He knew that it was Maria who had come in, and moaned, making a desperate effort to break free of the terrible will of this man whose fingers were pressing down painfully on his eyeballs.