It was the middle of the night in autumn. In one room of a house located on the Street of X in the city of Y, a pale young prostitute sat behind an old table, his chin in his hands, tediously chewing on the seeds of a watermelon that lay on a tray before him. A lamp on the table emitted a faint light. The light seemed less to brighten up the room than add to its gloom. In one corner of the room, the wallpaper had started to peel off. An old chair had been set as if abandoned on the opposite side of the table.
Despite the barrenness of the room, the young man would, from time to time, stop chewing on the seeds and lift his cool gaze to stare at the wall facing the table. Hanging unpretentiously from a bent nail on the wall was a small brass crucifix. The worn contours of the artless figure of the suffering Christ. Each time the man, let us call him K, looked at this carving, the tinge of loneliness behind his long eyelashes faded away for a brief moment. However, as soon as K shifted his gaze, he would invariably heave a sigh and once again begin chewing on the seeds in the tray.
K welcomed clients into his room night after night in order to pay off large sums of debt owed to creditors around town. Unlike his fellow ladies of pleasure, K could not lie to or swindle his clients; nor was he willful. Rather, each night with a pleasant smile he dallied with the various individuals who called on him in this cheerless room.
Certainly K’s nature was inborn, but if there was another reason to be found in his actions, it would be in the fact from his childhood he adhered to the Catholic faith he had inherited from his late mother, as evidenced by the austere crucifix hung on his wall.
This past spring, a willowy tourist from an Eastern European country had come to the horse races and ended up spending a capricious night in K’s room.
“Are you a Christian,” this tourist asked through thickly accented English.
“I am.”
“And you’re still pursuing this profession?”
“I am.”
“Don’t you think that by doing such despicable work you won’t be able to go to heaven?”
“No.” K cast a quick glance at the crucifix. Then he continued: “It’s because the Lord knows what’s in my heart.”
The tourist smiled, then reached into a briefcase and extracted a glass flamingo. “I bought this as a present for my child, but I’m going to give it to you in memory of tonight.” The tourist set the pink figure on the table, adding color to the edge of a grey existence.
Since the night he entertained his first customer, K had taken comfort in this assurance that Christ knew what was in his heart.
Sadly enough, this pious prostitute had been suffering from a violent strain of syphilis. Other harlots in the house heard of K’s affliction and offered various potions and pills. But K’s affliction grew no better. “Since you got this from a client,” a fellow whore said in passing, “you need to pass it along as quickly as you can. That’s the only way you’ll get better.”
K was pleasant enough to this whore, but in his heart he said a prayer, vowing to remain chaste on every occasion and asking to be delivered from every temptation. Having set himself to this resolution, K stubbornly refused every client.
“I have a terrifying disease. If you get too close to me you’ll catch it,” he admonished every potential visitor, even regular clients. As a result, little by little clients stopped visiting him and his household budget grew simultaneously tighter with each passing day.
Again this evening K sat munching absently on seeds and staring at the flamingo on his table that glowered in the dim light of the lamp. At that very moment, his door was flung open and a tall figure stumbled in. Due to the darkness of the room, K could not make out this figure’s features. The way the figure tottered, eventually leaning against the door, gave K the impression that he or she was drunk.
“Is there something you want,” K asked into the shadows.
The visitor silently raised a hand and held out two indistinct fingers. K was used to such impropriety. But the visitor did not strike K as improper.
Indeed, the visitor was familiar, gave K a sense of warmth, as though they had met before.
K crossed his arms across his body and shook his head. The visitor held up a third finger, then a fourth, and finally a fifth. K had never received such a sum of money from a visitor before. Nevertheless, K remained absolute, shaking his head at every turn.
This haggling with gestures and body movements continued for a long while. Toward the end, the visitor tenaciously increased the offer to ten. This was an enormous sum for a prostitute.
K was growing weary and stamped his foot repeatedly. As he did so, it chanced that the crucifix slipped loose and fell with a slight clang to the stone floor at his feet.
He quickly reached down to retrieve the precious object. When he snatched up the crucifix, K was overcome with the same sense of warmth that assailed him when the visitor first burst into his room.
When K looked up, he was startled to find the figure looming directly above him. K did not have a chance to move before he was ensnared in the visitor’s clutches.
* * * * *
Several hours later, the faint chirping of crickets added a forlorn autumnal tone to the breathing of the couple on the bed. But K’s dreams drifted upward like smoke from the dusty curtains of his bed and into the starry nighttime sky.
In his dream, K was in Jesus’ house, sharing a plate of Chinese food with the mysterious figure. Despite the luminosity of heaven, this figure remained indistinct. This is because in his dream, K was going blind from syphilis.
K awoke from his dream of heaven with a start. “If I’ve infected him with my illness.” K’s feelings were clouded with that thought, and K rushed to waken the stranger.
But to his surprise, other than his own self covered by the blanket, there was no sign of the visitor. Perhaps a dream wondered K. Still, the bed’s disarray suggested to K that it had not been a dream.
K stumbled out of bed and knelt on the cold stone floor to offer up an earnest prayer, just as had the beautiful Mary Magdalene who spoke of the risen Lord.
* * * * *
One night in the spring the following year, the willowy European sat across from K. “You’ve still got that crucifix,” the European laughed.
K then launched into the strange story of the mysterious visitor, the mysterious night and, most mysterious of all, the disappearance of his illness.
As K spoke, the European’s mind was occupied by the following thoughts:
I know that individual. I can’t place the name, but I am certain we are acquaintances. I hear this individual has gone mad, perhaps from syphilis.
Should I enlighten dear K? Or should I say nothing and leave him forever to dreams that are no better than old Russian legends?
When K finished his story, the European smiled and spoke: “How unusual! But you have never been sick since then?”
“No, not once,” K answered without any hesitation, his face glowing as he crunched on the melon seeds in his mouth.