“What are you about talking? What is this?” Tanya quickly asked.
“I cannot tell you. Honestly speaking, I know little myself. Still, there are some guesses…” Tararakh answered evasively.
The pithecanthropus approached the curtain dividing his den into two halves. He already undertook to draw it aside, but suddenly took his hand away and turned to Tanya. “I can’t. This isn’t a joke! You must take a terrible oath that you’ll be silent as the grave! Understand?”
“Do you have in mind the fatal oath?” Tanya asked with trembling in her voice. Tararakh sternly nodded. Tanya felt dryness in her mouth. To her, as to everybody in Tibidox, it was well known what the fatal oath was. A magician, uttering the fatal oath of his free will or under coercion, can no longer destroy it under any conditions. Even a random disturbance of the oath – for example, if, not keeping himself under control, he tells the secret to his closest friend – entails an agonizing and terrible death.
“Are you ready?” Tararakh asked.
“I swear that I will never describe to anyone or under any condition what I will see now! No one will find out from me about the Sleeping Adonis! Strike thunderus!” Tanya blurted out. The green spark, tearing away from her ring, hung in the middle of the room, after changing for a moment into the likeness of lightning. Precisely the same lightning would pierce Tanya if she decided to make a slip of the tongue.
“Sorry it was necessary to demand the oath from you… But I think you will soon understand everything yourself. Be introduced: here is the Sleeping Adonis!” Tararakh said, decisively parting the curtain.
Tanya involuntarily recoiled. A crystal coffin was swinging on silver chains behind the curtain. The girl irresolutely approached, looked at the Sleeping Adonis, and in her heart confined the worm of disappointment. She must acknowledge that she expected to see something else. In the crystal coffin, breathing heavily with hands under a cheek, was a short-legged man with such porous cheeks that they were the right size for planting flowers. A drying carnation doubled over pitifully in the buttonhole of his white dress coat.
“Phew, how terrible! What’s in his family tree? Crocodiles?” Tanya asked.
Tararakh merrily evaded the question. “What do you want? They did not find him in time; here he was also a little dusted! But then this is the real Ludwig Champignon! Somewhere here even his uniform was signed. It was mandatory that they marked all Sleeping Adnoises in the Middle Ages… Wait!” Tararakh fussily began to inspect the collar and showed Tanya the nametag. “Here you see! What I did say? Ludwig Champignon!” the pithecanthropus was pleased. Tanya did not begin to disappoint him, although it was clearly “Gottfried Bouillon” on the nametag. She had long since known from Vanka that the pithecanthropus read and wrote rather poorly.
Tanya looked at Tararakh, and her suspicion suddenly started to nag like a dental drill. “Know what, Tararakh… I’ll sit with him, but I won’t kiss him! If you need this, indeed better call Coffinia. She would even kiss a frog. And if it’s necessary to squeeze and tickle – it’s Dusya Dollova,” she stated.
Tararakh was even frightened. “You… What thought is that? The reason I asked you to sit with him is that I was certain: you will not begin to kiss him. Or else, he, for all I know, will wake up! All these Sleeping Adonises are a little nutsy. He’ll roam and annoy everyone. And then may even be violent. Yes, in general he’s somewhat…kind of strange. I don’t entirely like it.”
“Listen, Tararakh! Where did you get this Gottfri…Ludwig Champignon? What’s he to you in general?”
The pithecanthropus reproachfully stared at the girl, with his entire look showing that Ludwig Champignon was not particularly necessary to him. Even more, he would be glad to be done with him, but could not in view of specific circumstances.
“You have to understand, here’s some business… It’s a personal request of Sardanapal. I could not refuse. The academician found him in a cave on the coast approximately one month ago. Earlier the entrance into the cave was covered with sand, and here a storm washed away the sand. Sardanapal saw a crack, squeezed in, and looked: he was in the cave, before him a coffin on chains, and an inscription carved on the cliff above the coffin. I was not so good with reading and writing, but from the words of Sardanapal the meaning was this: ‘Caution! Deferred curse! The year he is taken away will be the year of terrible ordeal for all of Tibidox!’ Now do you understand why I made you take the oath? The discussion deals with the fate of the entire Tibidox!”
Tararakh scratched his stubbly cheek with his short fingers and with annoyance pushed the crystal coffin, swaying on the chains. “Medieval magicians loved to play dirty tricks on descendants. Some even contrived to invoke a pile of deferred curses hastily and quickly died in order that they could not be abolished,” he complained.
“Wait! Really, when they’re alive, then…” Tanya started in amazement.
“Aha. What, didn’t you know?” the pithecanthropus interrupted her. “While a magician is still of this world his curse can always be annulled, although sometimes it’s even necessary to wreck your brain, but when he’s dead – now that’s it indeed. How he cursed – so it is. Earlier you even know how it happened: let’s assume a weak magician had a stormy fight with a strong one. He’ll curse him, and quickly jump into a pond with a rock tied to his neck. Well now indeed the strong magician can disappear to nowhere – the curse can no longer be removed, even if you collapse! Later The Ancient One stopped this practice and so arranged that hence deferred curses could not be imposed. But only there’s little sense all the same: do you know how many curses are placed from previous times?” Tararakh even waved his hand, showing that there was a whole pile of such trash everywhere.
“I can imagine how troubled Sardanapal was when he read this warning!” Tanya said.
“‘Troubled’ is not the word! He immediately realized that all this is serious, and began to think how to get out of this. To leave him in the cave – vacations will start any day now. All kinds of curious fools will run along the coast and for sure will stick their noses into the cave. Then at night, he transferred the crystal coffin into Tibidox, handed him over to Yagge, and ordered her to protect him like the apple of her eye. ‘Put him,’ he says, ‘into any remote room in magic station and lock it. Only not in the basement, it’s full of evil spirits.’ But you know Yagge! In a couple of weeks, she was already tired of this Adonis and began persistently to get away from him. Her patients, you know, recover poorly when there’s a coffin in the next room. They, perhaps, even don’t know about it, but it’s unpleasant for her. In short, she got rid of him back to Sardanapal, and that one to me. He knows that I would never kiss this beggar and will allow no one to approach him. Besides, who would come into my den? Perhaps Professor Stinktopp once every hundred years wanders in to drink a glass or two. These adonises are simply all the same to Stinktopp… And the adonises, if you look closely, feel the same also.”
Unexpectedly Tararakh was on guard. The Sleeping Adonis noisily turned in the coffin and opened his eyes. Tanya yelled. Tararakh rushed to the coffin and, rocking it, started to sing in a hoarse voice: “Bye-bye! Quick beddy-bye! Will come a grey top, you will bite into a chop!” The Adonis blinked drowsily and, having closed his eyes again, began to smack his lips sweetly. Tararakh stopped singing and moved away from the coffin. “Ooh! It still works, but getting worse every time… Okay, I’m going. Else I’ll miss how the cabins are settling,” he said.
He was about to move to the door, but Tanya seized his hand. “TARARAKH! Why didn’t you tell me that he wakes up? You were hoping that I would stay, right?”
The pithecanthropus was terribly confused and, although there was no one else besides Tanya and the Adonis in the den, lowered his voice to a barely distinguishable whisper. “You understand… This matter here… It started very recently. He’s not so much awake, but like he suffers sleep-walking! I didn’t know this earlier. But somehow I woke and he was not here. I rushed into the corridor and searched! Barely found