What happens when passion is “spent”? Where does it go? Is it like money, always circulating, finally ending up, after passing from hand to hand, as a dirty, wrinkled bill in some unlikely eager fist?
All the cries and sighs of lovers, wreathing upward in a kind of urgent smoke: what happens to them? The precise moment when one first recognized the lover? The precise moment when one began to suffer? Do those moments stay in the universe? They wait, like parasites, for another host to come by, attaching to them as fixedly as if their former source of blood had not already existed. Then, something happens; those moments of passion take a little rest. But look, it is not for a long time, for passion is merely waiting somewhere around the corner, unlikely but determined. Passion is just waiting to steal silently into one’s sleep.
Or maybe it is like the laws of continuous conservation of energy. Nothing goes away; it just changes. So evil stays in the world, perhaps only lying dormant for a moment, in a heap, its black wings folded. But nothing is ever lost—evil stays, and so do passion and suffering and love cries and the tenderness of parents for children and the children’s pulling away from it all and then the beginning of life all over again. Nothing is lost.
Passion transmutes itself if necessary, rising from one person or another, sometimes from a couple at the same time. And then…and then…the smoke of its urgency wreathes itself away into the general passionate universe. But sometimes, when it goes from one person to another, it leaves a little mark.
So on Anna’s flesh, the imprint of Rasputin’s hands. But it was not merely her flesh that was seared; this was just the external mark of it. Rasputin, when he took her, forced his mark not only on her small white thighs but on her heart itself. Even as he himself expired, in all senses of the word, his imprint remained. Somewhere in the world, still vital, still hot with its own fire, as his last breath left, spiraling upward to become part of the general world breath, perhaps to find its way into another’s body. But the mark of his passion remained behind. It was the fate of the Rat, small, hunchbacked, to bear it.
In the early hours of the morning, Felix, in an ecstasy he could not describe, cleaned up his rooms and then, in his dressing room, fell on his knees before his altar to the Führer. Clasping his hands, he rocked back and forth. “There are no words,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the glass-covered photograph. The Führer, glassy-eyed, stared back at him. “Oh, mein Liebchen,” Felix murmured.
Putting the photograph down, Felix, still in his silk dressing gown and his stockings, moved quickly to his desk, where he began to scribble a few notes. “My dearest Helmut,” he wrote, unable to contain himself. “I think I have discovered…” Here Felix paused—would his old friend understand? He must not say too much: “…the secret of life!” Felix underlined the last words and put the pen down. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Yes, his precious jars were still there. Everyone was sleeping. He looked into the cupboards. The jars were quiet and peaceful, taking nourishment from the universal brine of sleep and renewal. Good. Felix sat down once more to his letter.
“Can you imagine? Perhaps we have not only the capability of keeping alive that which is best in humanity. Perhaps we can even do more than that.” Felix wrote quickly now, covering that which had been written with one hand as if to protect his thoughts from other prying eyes. “We had thought to improve on what was imperfect in man. We had thought to build a new race, a splendid new race from the fragments of our own. Such had been our dream. Do you remember?” Felix paused, then bent again to the letter. “But now it has been revealed to me—I dare not say how—that we can do much more. Oh, so much more.” Did he dare tell Helmut how? No, Felix decided, the authorities were no doubt everywhere. “I can say no more,” he concluded. “Only that I see a way—perhaps it is possible—to re-create the best and the greatest human possibilities.” “Nothing is lost,” thought Felix, “only transmuted.” Never had he felt himself so close to God.
To regenerate Rasputin. And after that, who knew? Felix’s mind swam at the possibilities. “Let me be worthy,” he prayed aloud. “Let me be worthy.”
But how to convince Anna to allow him to try? It would mean taking a bit, just a bit, from her thigh. Felix thought rapidly. Yes, if his laws of cellular multiplication were to be proved correct, one bit would be all he would need. Provided that Rasputin had indeed placed his imprint there. One cell, that is all it takes, one human cell. Felix thought with excitement of the specimens he had already collected. He had watched the Schatzie tail specimen now for nearly three months, and the particle showed every sign of wanting to regenerate itself. A supertail of a superdog. And the fingers of the Quartet. Felix planned to regenerate from them an entire quartet, better than the Tolstoi, less interested in modern cacophony, more interested, as in the past, in the classical compositions of his beloved composers. And his own sexual parts—was he not in the process of creating from that part of himself a supersex, a man of beauty and passion and supreme sexual confidence? In time, mankind would be able to create the exact shape and form of the most desired human attributes. Meanwhile, Felix had before him the possibility of working on this most cherished project, of re-creating the dead genius of the past from scraps that had been left on the flesh of others. For it was only through the dead genius that hope lay.
Felix thought of the troubles in the world, those that had led to mass exodus, displacement. Even he, Felix, servant of the Führer, had been forced to relocate himself. A victim of mankind’s folly. Now there was a chance to call upon the past with the aid of Rasputin. Maybe he wouldn’t have been Felix’s first choice. But the man had, after all, been the adviser to Tsars. And his hands lay almost beneath those of Felix.
The doctor realized that he had been working all his life just for this moment of revelation. “Schatzie,” whispered Felix, stroking the dog, who lay beside him on the couch. “We will see great things, you and I. It is not too late, hmm?” He shook the scruff of Schatzie’s neck affectionately back and forth, and Schatzie looked up at her master adoringly. “Great things lie ahead, my little one.” Schatzie thumped her tail sympathetically.