Interestingly, Katya had shown none of this quality to Father Sandru the previous 
day.
  	In fact, it was almost as though she'd been playing a part: the role of a rather 
bland God-fearing girl in the presence of a beloved priest. Her gaze had been 
respectfully downcast much of the time, her voice softer than usual, her vocabulary-which 
often tended to the salty-sweet and compliant.
  	Zeffer had found the performance almost comical, it was so exaggerated; but the 
Father had apparently been completely taken in by it. At one point he'd put his hand 
under Katya's chin to raise her face, telling her there was no reason to be shy.
  	Shy! Zeffer had thought. If only Sandru knew what this so-called shy woman was 
capable of! The parties she'd master-minded up in her Canyon-the place gossip-columnists 
had dubbed Coldheart Canyon; the excesses she'd choreographed behind the walls of her 
compound; the sheer filth she was capable of inventing when the mood took her. If the 
mask she'd been wearing had slipped for a heartbeat, and the poor, deluded Father Sandru 
had glimpsed the facts of the matter, he would have locked himself in a cell and sealed 
the door with prayers and holy water to keep her out.
  	But Katya was too good an actress to let him see the truth.
  	Perhaps in one sense, Katya Lupi's whole life had now become a performance. When 
she appeared on screen she played the role of simpering, abused orphans half her age, and 
large portions of the audience seemed to believe that this was reality. Meanwhile, every 
weekend or so, out of sight of the people who thought she was moral perfection, she threw 
the sort of parties for the other idols of Hollywood-the vamps and the clowns and the 
adventurers-which would have horrified her fans had they known what was going on. Which 
Katya Lupi was the real one? The weeping child who was the idol of millions, or the 
Scarlet Woman who was the Mistress of Coldheart Canyon? The orphan of the storm or the 
dope-fiend in her lair? Neither? Both?
  	Zeffer turned these thoughts over as Sandru took him from room to room, showing 
him tables and chairs, carpets and paintings; even mantelpieces.
  	"Does anything catch your eye?" Sandru asked him eventually. "Not really, 
Father," Zeffer replied, quite honestly. "I can get carpets as fine as these in America. 
I don't need to come out into the wilds of Romania to find work like this."
  	Sandru nodded. "Yes, of course," he said. He looked a little defeated. Zeffer 
took the opportunity to glance at his watch. "Perhaps I should be getting back to Katya," 
he said. In fact, the prospect of returning to the village and sitting in the little 
house where Katya had been born, there to be plied with thick coffee and sickeningly 
sweet cake, while Katya's relatives came by to stare at (and touch, as if in disbelief) 
their American visitors, did not enthrall him at all. But this visit with Father Sandru 
was becoming increasingly futile, and now that the Father had made his mercenary 
ambitions so plain, not a little embarrassing. There wasn't anything here that Zeffer 
could imagine transporting back to Los Angeles.
  	He reached into his coat to take out his wallet, intending to give the Father a 
hundred dollars for his troubles. But before he could produce the note, the Father's 
expression changed to one of profound seriousness.
  	"Wait," he said. "Before you dismiss me let me say this: I believe we understand 
one another. You are looking to buy something you could find in no other place. Something 
that's one of a kind, yes? And I am looking to make a sale."
  	"So is there something here you haven't shown me?" Zeffer said. "Something 
special?"
  	Sandru nodded. "There are some parts of the Fortress I have not shared with you," 
he said. "And with good reason, let me say. You see there are people who should not see 
what I have to show. But I think I understand you now, Mister Zeffer. You are a man of 
the world."
  	"You make it all sound very mysterious," Zeffer said.
  	"I don't know if it's mysterious," the priest said. "It is sad, I think, and 
human. You see, Duke Goga the man who built this Fortress-was not a good soul. The 
stories your Katya said she had been told as a child-"
  	"Were true?"
  	"In a manner of speaking. Goga was a great hunter. But he did not always limit 
his quarry to animals."
  	"Good God. So she was right to be afraid."
  	"The truth is, we are all a little afraid of what happened here," Sandru replied, 
"Because we are none of us certain of the truth. All we can do, young and old, is say our 
prayers, and put our souls into God's care when we're in this place."
  	Zeffer was intrigued now.
  	"Tell me then," he said to Sandru. "I want to know what went on in this place."
  	"Believe me please when I tell you I would not know where to begin," the good man 
replied. "I do not have the words."
  	"Truly?"
  	"Truly."
  	Zeffer studied him with new eyes; with a kind of envy. Surely it was a blessed 
state, to be unable to find words for the terribleness of certain deeds. To be mute when 
it came to atrocity, instead of gabbily familiar with it. He found his curiosity 
similarly muted. It seemed distasteful-not to mention pointless-to press the man to say 
more than he expressed himself capable of saying.
  	"Let's change the subject. Show me something utterly out of the ordinary," Zeffer 
said. "Then I'll be satisfied."
  	Sandru put on a smile, but it wasn't convincing. "It isn't much," he said.
  	"Oh sometimes you find beauty in the strangest places," Zeffer said, and as he 
spoke the little face of Katya Lupescu came into his mind's eye; pale in a blue twilight.
  
  
  TWO
  	Sandru led the way down the passageway to another door, this one rather smaller 
than the oak door they'd come through to get to this level. Out came his keys. He 
unlocked the door, and to Zeffer's surprise he and the priest were presented with another 
flight of steps, taking them yet deeper into the Fortress.
  	"Are you ready?" the Father asked.
  	"Absolutely," Zeffer said.
  	Down they went. The stairs were steep, the air becoming noticeably more frigid as 
they descended. Father Sandru said nothing as they went; he glanced back over his 
shoulder two or three times, to be sure that he still had Zeffer on his heels, but the 
expression on his face was far from happy, as though he rather regretted making the 
decision to bring Zeffer here, and would have turned on his heel and headed back up to 
the relative comfort of the floor above at the least invitation.
  	At the bottom of the stairs he stopped, and rubbed his hands together vigorously.
  	"I think before we proceed any further we should take a glass of something to 
warm us," he said. "What do you say?"
  	"I wouldn't say no," Zeffer said.
  	The Father went to a small cubby-hole in the wall a few yards from the bottom of