The Grasshopper (40 page)

“Well, I’m so afraid…”

“What are you afraid of, my dearest
darling? I don’t want you to be afraid of anything! Don’t you see
that? Why don’t you understand how much I love you? How much I want
you? Ever part of your body! Your beautiful breasts and your back…
your arms and your shoulders … and your legs, refined, perfect.
Your thighs, your hips… and your buttocks, my dearest buttocks. It
is because of it that I can’t take it anymore. You haven’t let me
get to know it at all, to love it, and caress it and kiss it. And
your rose. My most beautiful rose, which opens its petals only to
me, which loves only me, which is only mine. Only
mine!!!”

“I’m all only yours! Forever only
yours!” Manami hollered, finally certain that Pascal wanted
her.

Pascal was holding her in his arms
the entire time.

“I don’t care about anything!” he
shouted and opened the door.

He ran into the room, placed her on
the bed and lay down next to her. He raised her
nightgown.

“Pascal…” Manami whispered in heat.
“Just this now, please. And quickly. Just to calm ourselves.
Please, my love…”

Pascal got up, locked the door to
the living room, closed the door to the dormitory and
said

“I will make love with you until
morning, my goddess. I’m no longer in a hurry anywhere. I will
first kiss every inch of your body for hours. For hours, do you
hear me?”

“Pascal, don’t talk that way. You
know I can’t resist you. My son could come in. Please,
Pascal…”

“He can’t come in. I’ve locked the
door. And if he wakes up, you will come out from here and tell him
that I have a high fever and that you put that meat for lunch,
which you supposedly defrost every night, on my forehead to cool me
down,” Pascal laughed.

“What meat? What are you talking
about… Ah! You’re so shameless!” Manami remembered her fictional
alibi.

“And if Julius comes, let him come.
Let him find out. I want him to learn, as soon as possible. And
what do I care what the world is like up there? Only we exist! Only
the two of us, Manami!”

Manami didn’t say anything anymore.
Pascal took off his clothes and lay next to her. He slowly raised
her nightgown and stroked her legs.

“Now just that little problem,
Manami,” he whispered in her ear.

“What problem? I knew it, I knew
that something wasn’t to your liking!”

“Well… we were behind four doors,
but I still had to cover your mouth with my hand.”

“You’re so shameless!”

“You’re really loud,
Manami.”

“Apologize!
Immediately!”

“I apologize,” Pascal
smiled.

“So what if I’m loud? It’s your own
fault,” said Manami and started kissing him wildly.

Chapter 143

The following evening Seneca stayed
the night in the shelter with his family for the second time. When
he and Manami wished Pascal goodnight and retreated to their room,
Pascal went to his door with a heavy step. He entered the corridor
and started towards the bathroom. He stopped halfway.

“You won’t make love to him,
Manami. I know that. You promised me. You promised that you would
tell him how much we are in love. And I believe you, Manami.
Because I know that you love me as much as I love you. I only have
to make it through this night. Eir is between you. You won’t take
her anywhere…” Pascal turned on the light and went into the
bathroom. He raised his head and looked at his eyes in the mirror.
And they were wild. “What do I care that a child is between you! I
don’t allow him to lay in your bed. Or kiss you goodnight! I won’t
allow it!!! Not even on the cheek! I won’t allow him to touch you!
To look at you! I won’t allow it! I won’t allow anything
anymore!!!”

Pascal burst into the living room
and rushed toward their quarters. And then he stopped dead in his
tracks. At that same moment Seneca came out and quickly walked
towards the entrance to the shelter. He didn’t even look at Pascal.
He hurried out and slammed the door.

Manami, with her back to Pascal,
carefully closed her door. And then she turned around and ran into
his arms.

“I told him, Pascal!” she shouted.
“I told him everything!” Her entire body was trembling.

Pascal held her and didn’t say
anything. He didn’t interrupt her.

“When we went into the room,”
Manami continued excitedly, “he told me to take Eir away. So I took
her to the other room. So that we wouldn’t wake her if we
argued.

“When I came back he wasn’t in bed.
He was still standing in the same place, next to the bed, looking
at me. I stood near the open door and waited to hear what he was
going to say. And he said ‘You probably aren’t in the mood for
this. You satisfy your needs regularly with your
Pascal.’

“And I immediately, without
thinking, instantly, Pascal, told him that it wasn’t a need, that
it’s a great love, that we’re crazy in love and that we can’t live
without each other. I was preparing to rush into your room and get
you, but he was faster. He didn’t say a thing. He just turned
around and left.”

Chapter 144

“It’s not only that I can’t survive
without the children, Pascal. They need me, too. And I don’t mean
only my physical presence,” said Manami, when they calmed down and
sat down on their cover. “Not only to care for them, provide for
them, look out for them: they need me spiritually too.

“I give to them and I have to give
to them until they grow up, something that Julius cannot provide.
Something that he doesn’t have. I don’t know how to describe it.
But I feel it. I know it. I’m certain of it. And it’s something
that both of them need in order to develop their
personalities.

“Not only Eir. Peter needs this
from me, too. He is like his father in appearance and in
intelligence, the way that he thinks… And his character takes after
Julius, mainly. I mean mainly in span, in quantity…

“But I have a corner in Peter. And
that corner is very important. You see yourself that he is actually
a sincere and cheerful child.”

“Yes, Manami. You’re right. I’m
delighted when he is so joyful. And when I see how happy it makes
you.”

“That’s right. And that’s why Peter
needs me. To defend and safeguard that joy, that merriness, as you
put it, from the world.”

“Don’t worry, darling. We won’t
allow Julius to take away your children. He also isn’t that type of
person, Manami. He wouldn’t take children away from their mother.
The mayor is a good man.”

“He puts family above all other
things, Pascal. No… perhaps that isn’t the right word. Perhaps we
aren’t more important than anything else. He has his… mission. The
way that he sees it. And the family, the faithful wife and good,
well-behaved children – he considers them a given. He never would
have thought, never would have considered that it could be any
differently. If it had crossed his mind… only once… only one
fleeting thought… he would have never left me alone with
you.”

“And what now, Manami? Will we wait
for his move or will we leave this place on our own?”

“We won’t leave our shelter until
we have to, Pascal. Here the four of us are together. I didn’t even
think it through seriously until now. I kept postponing, waiting
for it to happen. And now that it’s happened…” Manami suddenly
raised her head from his shoulder. “Now I don’t even need to think,
Pascal!” She said loudly. “Now I know! I probably knew the entire
time, I’m sure I did…”

“What, Manami? What did you
know?”

“But I didn’t want to admit it to
myself, didn’t want to say it…”

“What? Tell me.”

“Because I would have a guilty
conscious and I wouldn’t be able to completely give in to my love.
Yes, that’s it. I’m sure it is!”

“What didn’t you admit to yourself?
Well, tell me. Stop torturing me.”

“Julius won’t throw us out of the
shelter, Pascal.”

“He won’t? Then what?” Pascal
asked.

“He’ll do something to
himself.”

Chapter 145

“Thank you for turning on the
energy and stopping the vaporizations,” Dr. Palladino said at the
beginning of his last conversation with the Grasshopper.

“You’re welcome.”

“You asked me at the beginning what
I thought was the reason why you were talking to me. And I said
because you were bored. Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“You responded that you were
talking to me because you were bored, because you longed for a
conversation with an intellectual and because you wanted to see
what your psychological profile was like.”

“Exactly.”

“No. None of that is
true.”

“No?”

“One serial killer that we were
looking for wrote to the Inspectorate begging them to catch him, to
stop him.”

“And? Did you catch
him?”

“That same moment. Because he wrote
that in an email from his workplace, from his office.”

“So, Doctor, you didn’t get much
glory in that case, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Dr. Palladino, you think that
through our conversation I have actually been asking you to catch
me and stop me?”

“Yes, the entire time.”

“Well, then catch me, please, Dr.
Palladino. I’m waiting for you. You know where I am, at my
workplace.”

“It’s not funny. On that first day,
when I heard your answer that you kill because you can, I wanted to
leave this office.”

“I remember.”

“I told you that I was leaving
because I believed that I couldn’t persuade you to stop killing. Do
you remember what you told me then, Mr. Grasshopper?”

“I remember.”

“You claimed, correctly, that I
cannot be completely certain of that.”

“Yes. And I still think
so.”

“Now let me ask you, Mr.
Grasshopper, can you be completely certain that Pascal Alexander’s
Third Renaissance will not bring something that is presently
unimaginable to us now? Something that might enable life to defeat
the collective Thanatos?”

“Of course I can’t be completely
certain. A person cannot be absolutely certain of anything. But
what does that change, Dr. Palladino?”

“You told me that by leaving I
would become your accomplice. And I stayed.”

“I really don’t see any parallel.
The fact that I’m not certain whether anything would develop from
something that doesn’t exist at all, does not make me your
accomplice.”

“I agree. It doesn’t make you my
accomplice. It makes me your accomplice. And this time I agree to
it.”

“I admit that I don’t understand
you, Doctor.”

“You understand, you understand. I
agree to be your accomplice in your transformation from an absolute
killer to a man who sent a warning to the world. A warning that
people will never forget.”

“A warning? You’ve come to the
conclusion that I only warned mankind and that now I will stop
this?”

“Yes. And that is why I expect you
to kill yourself.”

“I will. In the end.”

“No, not in the end… soon, as soon
as possible. You didn’t only warn people, Mr. Grasshopper. You did
much more than that. You saved them from certain death. You saved
the world from an apocalypse. You prevented Erivan from taking over
the command desk.”

“Doctor, according to that logic
Erivan can also be considered a contributor because he prevented
the Kaellas from reaching this position. It’s just history
repeating itself, Dr. Palladino. Everything remains the same. The
typical struggle for domination between a few strongmen.
Outmaneuvering, undermining, intrigues, assassinations… And the
victims don’t care which one of them will kill them in the end. The
victims are always only victims.”

Chapter 146

“What are you saying, Manami?
You’re probably overreacting. You’re too excited now. Let’s talk
about something else, and we’ll come back to this later. When we
calm down.”

“Julius knows how much everyone
respects him,” Manami continued, without listening to Pascal. “He
knows that he is a great man. And that’s what’s most important to
him. He is a proud man. And he thinks… he’s probably right, that he
would lose that respect if people learned that his wife cheated on
him. Not only cheated – but left him. He cannot allow that. He will
not allow that! I’m sure he won’t!” Manami raised her
voice.

“Alright, my love, alright…” Pascal
tried to calm her.

“I don’t know how he’ll do it,
Pascal, how he’ll disappear from this world, while being remembered
as the great, undefeated, untainted Julius Seneca, the Mayor of
Megapolis.”

“He is great, Manami, and he will
go down in history as such,” Pascal said.

“Yes, yes he is… of course. Don’t
get me wrong. I’m not ridiculing his pride. I only understand it.
Such people like Julius, such as my late father, the general, I
understand them best. I grew up beside them, lived… my entire life.
Julius is now thinking… but he is not thinking about us, Pascal.
Nor is he thinking about the children, trust me. He has already
accepted the fact that he is a cheated husband and now he is just
looking for a solution how to come out of that without being
humiliated. And Julius always finds a solution. Always. And the
only solution that I see… It can be only his… or my… or our
death.”