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- Herausgeber: Books on Demand
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Good afternoon, Monsieur Le Bon. A good day to you, too, Monsieur Joly. How long has the patient been in a persistent vegetative state? I think since the mid eighties. And the patient is still alive? Yes, Maurice, the brain is still wholly intact, as are the organs... But Gustave, why does not the patient wake up? It seems that the patient is aware of everything that happens around him, but for some reason prefers to flee from reality. I understand, Gustave; this is tragic, very tragic but also not bad, because then we can openly talk while we play. All right, Maurice, lets get the patient to the table and let him watch our game...
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Dedicated to the patient
Good afternoon, Monsieur Le Bon.
A good day to you, too, Monsieur Joly.
How long has the patient been in a persistent vegetative state?
I think since the mid-eighties.
And the patient is still alive?
Yes, Maurice, the brain is still wholly intact, as are the organs.
But Gustave, why doesn’t the patient wake up?
It seems that the patient is aware of everything that
happens around him, ... but for some reason
prefers to flee from reality.
I understand, Gustave; this is tragic, very tragic –
but also not bad ... because then we can openly talk while we play.
All right, Maurice, let’s get the patient to the table and let him watch our game.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Epilogue
Prologue
Rasputin’s Book Circle was located on Store Street, a side street in the Fitzrovia district, in one of those typical London buildings. Three-story blocks of houses with stores in the basement, separated by large white pilasters. Above a whitewashed cornice that runs the length of the building, they feature a clinker facade in tinges of muted dark red, filthy black, and washed-out gray. The shop window, resting on a gray-painted, coffered pedestal, and the gray-framed glass entrance door offered a view into a space lined with overflowing bookshelves, crammed with display tables, showcases, and open cardboard boxes, the room narrowing toward the back like a tube.
A torrential downpour was pounding, staccatofashion, on the gray awning spanning the entrance of number 33 and cascading onto the orange-gray sidewalk slabs. “Just about made it,” Kimberly sighed with relief, after she had rescued the last of the books from the large exhibition table that stood in front of the store window as an eye-catcher to entice walk-in customers to enter the store. Exhausted, she let herself drop onto the worn velvet cushion of the neo-baroque sofa that filled the niche diagonally opposite the sales counter. This was her refuge, to where she could retreat when she was alone in the store, to catch her breath or to become immersed in reading one of the countless books she was surrounded by all day long.
Kimberly was one of those red-haired, pale, blueeyed, freckled, typically Celtic-looking women who aptly personified the ‘witch’ prototype according to tradition. Whenever she leafed through one of the books on devil worship and witchcraft, she imagined with a mixture of horror and contentment that, solely because of her appearance, she would undoubtedly have been burned at the stake in the Middle Ages. Even though she was known as a specialist in medieval history and mythology and had made a name for herself as an expert in the field of heretic inquisition and witch trials, Kimberly kept her distance from the new witch culture movement whose representatives regularly met for readings and sessions in her bookstore. She certainly had feelings of admiration for the self-confidence of these women who called themselves young urban witches and who practiced, without any reservation, satanic rituals which they then wrote about in texts full of emotion. Still, in her mid-forties, Kimberly preferred the scientist’s distanced view of the phenomenon of witchcraft. Even if she sometimes deviated from cold analysis and, in her imagination, gave in to confusing reveries about her witch-like nature, she always did so in secret and on her own, and her transgressions went unnoticed by the outside world.
Kimberly let the pentacle-patterned blanket slide off her shoulders and played with the idea of brewing a cup of tea when the store bell rang frantically and startled her from her comfortable break. It was a young man who came crashing in through the front door, backward, heaving in a large cardboard box, much of which was already soaked. “He is seeking shelter from the rain,” she thought and stood waiting behind the counter. She watched as the young man, swaying under the load despite his exoskeleton, moved toward her, barely avoiding collisions with the tables. His rockabilly hair, which was excessively coiffed with hair wax, was perfectly styled and had remained unruffled despite being drenched by the rain. He wore a Lonsdale T-shirt that wetly clung to his belt and 501 jeans over ankle-high Poncho boots. They were the kind of boots whose tips looked like they had been chopped off. Kimberly’s delicate nose picked up the smell of stale beer, which intensified as the young man approached. He slammed the carton onto the counter and his alcohol-laden breath blew directly into her face.
“Good morning,” he grumbled with a strong Cockney accent. “I have ancient books here that deal with all kinds of hocus-pocus.” He was evidently wearing a display contact lens for the partially blind, which had increasingly replaced smart glasses in recent years; it gave his gaze a touch of grotesque distortion. Kimberly believed she could see lust in those eyes and instinctively flinched a little. “Don’t you come near me, you poison dwarf,” she thought, with a slight hint of disgust.
“The RFID chip and eyelid interface can’t connect, so I had to carry these books without the aid of the exoskeleton,” the young man explained affably, pointing to the strapped-in power loader usually used by people who worked in the moving industry.
“Good morning,” Kimberly replied. “We don’t usually buy used books; we only broker them, if at all.” She pointed her chin in the direction of the box and continued: “And only if they are not soaked from the rain.” She paused briefly, then casually moved her pale hand to indicate a semicircle: “Take a look around. Our range comprises high-quality books from the occult only.”
The young man looked around and stepped up to one of the shelves. “Scarlet Imprint, is that a brand or a series?” he asked. Kimberly imperceptibly turned up her nose. She was sure that since the man could not connect his RFID chip to the lens, he could barely decipher the book titles. “This is a publisher of special quality,” she replied, “whose books are individually designed and elaborately crafted.”
The young man pulled one of the volumes from the shelf and examined it with fascination.
“I don’t happen to read books,” he remarked and pushed the book back into the shelf. “The experiences of others are of little interest to me; I prefer to experience and collect my own. I am a guild leader in Holoworld,” he stated proudly.
“Holoworld, the multi-massive online existence?”
Kimberly asked, interested.
“I work half-days at a moving company, and the rest of the day, I’m an armorer in Holoworld,” the young man replied. “But I’m thinking of giving up my moving job because I earn more in Holoworld. I am now the guild’s armorer and can make a good living from it. The weapons I produce for the game, I sell to my guild at a large profit, and as a guild leader, I hold a high position in the game.” He grinned. “That means a lot of cryptos for petty cash,” he added mischievously.
Kimberly let him talk. She was sure that Rockabilly was spending his money in slot machines, which would fit his profile. The exact traceability of cryptocurrencies via the private blockchain IP by search engine algorithms would undoubtedly keep leading him to the slot machines. “Which is where they will take everything from you again, you loser,” she thought mockingly.
“Holoworld now has five hundred million players and not a single competitor. Thus, my income is secured. I even pay into the Holoworld pension insurance,” the boy continued. “It is pointless to deal with books; they have no added value. As the saying goes: There is no other world; come to Holoworld.”
Kimberly smiled: “I have to disappoint you. Unfortunately, you must take your books back with you. As I said, we do not generally buy used editions. Try the flea market.”
“After I analyzed the carton contents through the display contact lens, the search engine led me to you,” the young man did not let up.
“Really?” Kimberly asked in surprise, and for the first time, her voice sounded a little interested. “Where did you get that box of books?”
The ringing of the shop doorbell interrupted their conversation. A tall customer with long, braided, mostly gray hair and a parietal lobe interface, leaning on a gnarled ebony stick, shook the raindrops from the rubberized black cotton fabric of his Klepper coat and entered. When the Rockabilly saw the customer, he instinctively took a few steps back. “Transhumanist-Cyborg,” he murmured, half in fear, half in admiration. The customer consciously ignored the much shorter other man and walked straight toward Kimberly.
The Rockabilly said casually: “I’ll come by again tonight, and if you want to buy the books, we’ll make a deal. If not, I’ll take them back,” and staggered to the exit before Kimberly could reply. The area around the counter smelled like beer. “Great,” Kimberly thought. “Now I have a crate of flea market books around my neck.” She would have loved to have given the box straight back to that strange young man.
“Doctor, good morning,” she addressed the new customer. The Doctor seemed more like a junkie, but everyone who knew him called him Doctor because he liked to lecture on all aspects of Celticism.
The customer approached the terminal located in the corner behind the counter and connected his parietal lobe interface to the database to search for a book in the catalog lists. Meanwhile, Kimberly was struggling to move the box to the right corner of the counter, and her face clearly showed her annoyance at this hassle.
The Doctor turned to the saleswoman and tapped his gnarled stick twice on the floor. Kimberly jumped up and looked at him questioningly. “I am looking for an old work in German, an encyclopedia in twelve volumes entitled The Monastery by Johann Scheible,” his bass voice boomed. “I have found nothing on the web. Do you have any idea where we could obtain this work, Mrs. Morrigain?”
“You didn’t find anything in the antiquarian database either?”
“No,” the man replied.
“I’ll have a look for you, Doctor. Do you have the search words?”
“Start with the title, Mrs. Morrigain, The Monastery. Secular and Spiritual, and search beyond that for the keywords Faustian Pact and Faustian Magic. You do speak German.”
Kimberly connected her RFID chip to the eyelid interface and checked the database hologram. “According to the German database system, it is a work that Johann Scheible published in 1845 in small numbers, just one edition,” she explained. “Faustian magic and the Faustian Pact with Mephistopheles. The story of Faust in rhyme, based on the only known copy from 1587 in the Royal Library in Copenhagen.”
While she continued to search for the book in the database, the tall man looked around the store and noticed the half-open cardboard box at the end of the counter. “May I have a look at the books in the box, Mrs. Morrigain?” he asked with interest. “Yes, of course,” Kimberly mumbled absent-mindedly, without interrupting her search.
The Doctor opened the box. Immediately, an elegantly designed, voluminous book bound in snakeskin caught his eye. He read the title, The Game of Saturn, and continued to rummage. Then he took out another book and read the author’s name: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.
“The book you are looking for contains Sigilles,” Kimberly spoke up again, “and the key to the Pact. In any case, two of the volumes of the encyclopedia are relevant with regard to Faust.” She looked at the Doctor, shrugged her shoulders apologetically, and added: “The library version in the Prussian State Library is only accessible to registered scholars.”
The Doctor appeared to be only half listening. “What are all these books here, Mrs. Morrigain?” he inquired. “I would like to purchase a few of the volumes from this box.”
Kimberly looked up, bewildered. “These are flea market books.” “What do you want for the whole box?” The Doctor’s bass boomed questioningly. Irritated, Kimberly pushed her glasses on her forehead and said: “These books are not for sale for the time being. They do not belong to us.”
“Look what I found in the box, Mrs. Morrigain,” the Doctor said, staring at Kimberly with a strange look. “The Monastery.”
Kimberly took the book out of his hand and slowly and carefully read the title embossed in old German fraktur script, translating from the German: “Johann Scheible, Doctor Johann Faust … I. Faust and His Predecessors.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “III. Faust’s Compulsion of Hell. Jesuitarum libellus, or The Mighty Sea Spirit. Book of Miracles, Art, and Wonders. The Key to the Compulsion of Hell.” Then she looked expectantly at the Doctor and said: “You, Doctor, are quite proficient in German, too.” She slammed the book shut, blew some dust off the edges, and added with a hint of astonishment in her voice: “And this is the book you are looking for.” Kimberly began to examine the contents of the box more closely. “These books are worth a fortune. They are not even available in antiquarian stores anymore,” she remarked, astounded. They both rummaged through the box.
“Here, look at this book, Doctor, it is handwritten on parchment. The writing looks Aramaic.”
“No, Mrs. Morrigain,” the man dryly contradicted her, “it is Chaldean, and this one is …,” the Doctor stopped, then continued in amazement: “This here is a copy of the Greek magical papyri in ancient Greek, Coptic, and Demotic.”
The two bibliophilic treasure hunters placed all the volumes on the counter, flabbergasted. The Doctor gasped with excitement and took off his coat. Kimberly wrung her hands, oblivious of her thoughts, red spots appearing on her pale face.
“What do we do now, Mrs. Morrigain?” the Doctor asked. “We must contact the owner. The young man with the exoskeleton from earlier.” “Where did he get those books?”
“I didn’t ask him.” Kimberly apologized.
“Well then,” the Doctor commenced, “he is not here, but we should find a solution. I will give you 2,000 pounds for the volume of The Monastery, Mrs. Morrigain.”
“I cannot give you this book,” Kimberly warded him off. “I have not acquired these books yet. Come back tomorrow.”
“Surely, you don’t think that I would give up this treasure and go home without a single volume,” the Doctor exclaimed. “I’ll give you a down-payment of 3,000, no 5,000 pounds for it, Mrs. Morrigain, and you will make a deal with the young man.”
“You know it is not right for me to promise anything to you before I have bought the young man’s books.”
“5,000 pounds at once!” the Doctor barked with a wicked expression on his face. “Whatspay Transfer!” he decreed and activated his payment system. “Tomorrow, we’ll close the deal,” he added calmly, wrapped himself in his coat, and reached for the volume of The Monastery: “I’ll take this with me today.”
“You persuaded me,” Kimberly sighed and took her hand off the cover. “Tonight, I’m going to settle with the young man.” She looked at her counterpart questioningly. “5,000 pounds?” The Doctor nodded affirmatively and completed the payment process via his interface. Then he jammed the book under his arm, gave a curt bow, and knocked his gnarled stick on the floor three times as a farewell gesture.
After the glass door had closed with a chime of the bells, Kimberly looked at the volumes and bundles of manuscripts lined up on the counter. Lovingly, she stroked the patina of the bindings and absorbed the scent of centuries of scholarship. From under the counter, she pulled out an undamaged cardboard box and began to unwrap the books wistfully. “Luckily, the prints remained dry,” she thought, “only the manuscripts have gotten damp.” She carefully stacked the volumes on top of each other. Kimberly placed the manuscripts on top and left the covers open so that the damp pages could breathe. She took a bundle of corrugated, unbleached paper that was soaked in several places, to lay it out temporarily to dry. Carefully, she separated the stuck-together front sheets and turned over the first page, from which a more extensive piece had torn off. The tight, regular handwriting immediately caught her attention. “Florentine Bastarda,” she murmured and examined the page more closely. The rainwater had made the black ink run together and rendered part of the writing illegible. “This is English,” she marveled as she deciphered the legible fragments, “modern English!” She excitedly turned over more pages and shook her head several times in disbelief. “Who would nowadays use a medieval chancery script to write a diary?” she asked herself. It seemed to be a diary, or a report, or something similar, but unfortunately, it was incomplete in places. Some pages were missing; on others, the writing was hardly decipherable.
Kimberly was pleased that not many customers were likely to visit on this rainy Friday afternoon, and that she had enough time for undisturbed browsing before the young man would return. She put down the manuscript and went to the teapot. Finally, she had the opportunity to prepare her beloved Nepalese highland tea, a ceremony Kimberly performed full of eager anticipation of the pleasures to follow. She carefully allowed the dark green first-flush leaves with the golden-yellow tint to trickle into the exquisite china pot and, smiling serenely, picked up the single leaf that had fallen on the tabletop with her moistened fingertip to grind it between her teeth with relish. This wonderfully aromatic vintage from a hidden plantation on the southern slopes of Kangchenjunga in the Ilam district, an insider tip from connoisseurs, had been given to her by one of the young witches who had been on a pilgrimage to the Devi temples of the Himalayas. When the water boiled, she counted to thirty, and only then did she pour it because she was convinced that the tea worked best when the water was slightly below boiling point. Balancing the tea set on a tray she retreated to her niche and sank into the velvety cushions of the sofa. Kimberly poured the tea from the pot into the cup in a gentle arc, pulled her knees up, and sipped the steaming brew with delight. Then, she opened the manuscript and began to read the much-torn first page.
Ave Sorores, un-Fra...
Here now follows my report for the Ziggurat, which I have made available to the Egregore ... It is a further confirmation of the Oracle’s prediction about ... which we must expect. To change the course of the probabilities, we must explicitly point out ... The reason is … that the error delta mentioned in my story cannot be calculated by the Or... The Oracle must adjust the variables to that effect ... And this error delta will trigger a quantum leap effect, which will make the mechanism and our vocation obsolete. There is still enough time to ... neutralize the error delta to steer our plan for Homo Sapiens in the right direction ... I have described my narrative of the events exactly in the way I experienced them ... the transmission of the Oracle as a gain in knowledge ...
The rest of the text was missing. The next pages were also missing. Kimberly took another sip of Nepalese tea, placed a thick pillow on the sidearm of the sofa, which was decorated with a black lion’s head, and lay down in a comfortable position. She read on:
1
...remembered that I was in Warsaw. I had left Kiev and had traveled by land to Poland. I know that in Kiev I attended a concert by the heavy metal band Warlock and there I heard the song All We Are. I still remember the concert poster displaying an alligator.
At the Kiev bus station, I bought a bottle of water. How I got on the bus and what happened on the trip, I do not remember. The last thing I remember is that I was in an intensely psychedelic state in Warsaw when I turned toward two employees of a private security company.
Afterward, I woke up in a hospital, fixed to the bed, in a cramped six-bed room. Some of the other patients were also tied to the bed, but not all of them. One of them talked incessantly in an idiom that sounded like a mixture of different Eastern European languages. I did not understand what the man was talking about, but his endless monologue was composed of at least six different languages. The other patients seemed to be under powerful medication, as they were staring lethargically into space, drooling, with their mouths open. It was an eerie place. Three of the inmates did not seem to be locals; they reminded me of Western Europeans.
One of them approached me, looking confused, and addressed me in English in a hounded voice. “Welcome to purgatory! All I remember is drinking a Devil’s cocktail in Vienna,” he shouted, adding with a shrug, “and then I woke up here. At some point. I cannot remember when, weeks, months ago!” He cried and held his head with both hands. “We’ll never get out of here,” he yelled.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“It seems to be Poland. I once heard the nurses whispering in Polish,” he replied, with a convulsive twitch on his face. “But where I do not know. There is no possibility of communication with the outside world here. They put something into our drinking water, but if you do not drink for three days, your mind becomes clear again. Then all that takes effect is the medication. ... They tap into our brains. ... None of the men and women is actually sick. About twenty people are here. They do not tell us anything, but they keep us quiet so they can run experiments with us. Two of the Doctors speak English with a slight Eastern European accent, and one speaks perfect English.”
“What does the piercing voice of our roommate constantly tell us?” I asked.
“I don’t know that, either,” replied the man who looked down on me from the edge of the bed. “There are two Doctors here: Dr. Lomer, the head physician,” he flinched when he mentioned the name, “and his assistant Dr. Ilse Anschütz. They have German names, but they are not German.” He rolled his eyes, and his drool dripped on my chest. His face bright red, he continued croaking: “The real Dr. Lomer was a German occultist, an ariosophist.” Suddenly tired, he added: “Dr. Anschütz constantly records everything, like a reporter, as if she were recording and commenting on everything that is filmed.”
I contemplated that this place, where I had found myself, had to be related to my Ukrainian experiences. And the fact that an occultist and ariosophist was in command here gave me a premonition of how the events would develop.
When a gigantic orderly entered the room, the English-speaking patient immediately fled back into the corner to get as far away as possible. My shackles were released. The orderly gestured for me to leave the bed and follow him. I caught a glimpse from the barred window. The surroundings looked like a jungle. If it were supposed to be Poland, it would have to be somewhere in the country’s east. “The last primeval forests of Europe,” I thought to myself.
Outside in the hallway, patients were standing around lethargically. “This is a prison.” The thought went through my mind. We walked down a semi-dark corridor, dimly lit with cold neon light. The dark green walls depressed the mood. A woman’s voice was ringing from one of the rooms, and a cold shiver ran down my spine. It seemed as if someone was screaming their vocal cords out of their throat. There was an arrow pointing upward on the door. No, it was not an arrow; it was a rune. It was the Tyr rune, which stands for Justice in the older Futhark, the Germanic first row of runes. All the other doors leading out into the corridor were marked with runes as well. The orderly told me to wait outside the door with the rune of Justice. A mixture of cries of pain and music filtered through to the outside. I could hear the voluminous soprano of Maria Callas. An aria from the Magic Flute ended at an exaggerated volume and began again.
The orderly opened the door and looked inside the room. I was able to look inside, too. Extremely bright arrhythmic flashes of light flickered through the room. A woman was tied to an armchair, and her head was fixed. Water dripped from a height of about three meters onto the woman’s half-shaved head from the ceiling. Also, water was forced into her through a hose that was stuck in her mouth. I could see that she had wet herself. After a few seconds, the orderly closed the door again and placed a red line on a chart affixed to the door frame. I counted and it was the sixth line. I assumed that they represented days. The orderly told me to go ahead.
2
At the door at the end of the corridor, I saw the rune Hagalaz, the rune of destruction. I wondered where I could be because what I saw did not quite make sense. Why would old Nordic rune symbols be used in a hospital or prison in Poland, and people tortured psychologically and physically? It seemed surreal. There were cameras everywhere, monitoring the entire hospital wing.
The orderly opened the door, and we entered the room, which had only the most basic furniture. Sitting at a desk was a man in his sixties with a mustache, looking at me over his gold-rimmed glasses. His appearance seemed authoritarian. The rubbed brass sign on the edge of his desk identified him as Dr. Georg Lomer. Next to him stood a woman. I read Dr. Ilse Anschütz on the name tag on her doctor’s coat. There was a terrarium with small black scorpions in a corner of the room. Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 played softly in the background, and Dr. Anschütz pulled a dictating machine out of her pocket and turned it on. The orderly pushed me onto a chair screwed to the floor and fixed me with foot and handcuffs. He left my left arm free. Then he left. A framed poem by Ernst Moritz Arndt, from the Napoleonic Wars, hung on the wall and I remembered the Battle of the Nations Monument in Leipzig that I had visited.
“Has he ever experienced such harmony as that of Shostakovich?” the Doctor addressed me with a perfect Boston accent and swung his right hand to the beat of the waltz. “Like the calm in the eye of the hurricane, while outside rages the Behemoth that devours everything.” A new melody began. “The snowstorm, a waltz by Georgi Sviridov,” Dr. Lomer noted. I shook my head as I was not familiar with this composition.
Without looking, I began to quote from the poem on the wall: “There is the German’s fatherland / where oaths attest the grasped hand / where truth beams from the sparkling eyes / and in the heart love warmly lies / that is the land – all Germany’s thy fatherland!”
“How many languages does he speak?” asked Dr. Lomer.
“Some fluently and some partly,” I spoke into the camera that was mounted on the wall behind the Doctor. On the back of one of the books stacked on the desk, I read the title The Genealogy of Morality and noted: “Many have lost their way in Nietzsche.” The Doctor raised his eyebrow questioningly.
“Nietzsche’s Übermensch is by definition not racially determined, but transcendental. Transhuman, not Suprahuman,” I explained. “Not only his understanding of morality confirms this, but it can also be read from his writing Nietzsche contra Wagner.”
Dr. Lomer wiped his lenses with a fine cloth and kept silent. He looked, apparently absent-mindedly, at the green desk pad, pushed his glasses back on his nose with pointed fingers, and looked at me. The multiplied radiance of his pale, piercing eyes, as if under a burning glass, hit me abruptly and made me weaken.
“He is a traveler in the dimensions of the psyche, and travelers, as is well known, should not be stopped,” he said with a cold, cutting voice that made me shiver. “He wants to prove to me that he is a human being and can think? All I hear is an endless tape loop of stammering quotations. Such methods of self-protection do not reach me because I am intellectually, mentally, and professionally superior to him.” He formed his mouth into something that was supposed to look like a smug smile and added: “I will torture him. He will not escape. But I will allow him to escape torture if he guesses the composer of the following piece of music.”
The music began, but I was not familiar with the composition. “Well?” the Doctor wanted to know. “I don’t know,” I replied.
“I knew, of course, that he is just an obscene, banal creature and could not know it.” Lomer laughed scornfully. “That is how it is with deluded, self-absorbed, and semi-educated cosmopolitan subjects like him, whose understanding of culture is selective and lost in partial details. Wretchedly uncultured, devoid of all loyalty and belonging to no one but their syndicate, their pack.” While he was getting excited, saliva spattered from his lips in fine bubbles. His eyes remained fixed on me, then he relaxed. “Aram Khachaturian, The Masquerade Waltz,” he exclaimed, almost cheerfully, and swung his right hand again in time with the melody. “One of the most beautiful waltzes ever composed.”
Because of the hopelessness of my situation, I let myself be driven by the sounds. While the Doctor in front of me swung his imaginary baton, I did not attempt to mobilize my remaining inner resistance and gave up on myself at this moment.
“Only once, I will make this offer,” Dr. Lomer’s words jarred me out of my self-forgetfulness. “He shall tell me everything, and since he does not know what I want to know, he will tell me every single detail.” I opened my eyes and stared at the Doctor’s gray-haired head, which bent down toward me. His lips secreted drool, covering my face with a fine film of moisture. “Otherwise, he will travel into the abysses of the eleven dimensions, and I will ask him no more questions but will extract everything from his brain as it escapes into madness,” he added threateningly. He sat down at his desk and gave Dr. Anschütz a sign. She put the dictation machine on the table. “Meanwhile, I’ll prepare the water tank,” she said and turned to leave. Dr. Anschütz approached me, and I noticed the T-shirt she was wearing under her gown. I noticed the slogan, Save the Dolphins, and caught her gaze. In her cold eyes, I could see the cruelty. She looked more like someone who tortured animals than someone who saved dolphins. I turned my head back to the Doctor and asked: “Where shall I begin?” and I noticed that Dr. Lomer practically never blinked.
“This is the only decision he is allowed to make here,” Dr. Lomer replied.
3
His eyes were blindfolded. Nevertheless, in the total darkness of the vault, he could feel the presence of people. He breathed deeply, in and out. The air, soaked with heavy aromas, made him stagger slightly. The unsteady crackling of burning candles and torches was the only perceptible sound. His nakedness did not bother him.
A well-tempered baritone broke the silence:
The endeavor to achieve your
own bliss in raptures,
Faithfulness sealed in the heart, a divine spark,
To follow the One,
Who brings the yoke of damnation to those not-of-Him
On the right path.
The man heard a gong sound behind him and intuitively turned his blindfolded eyes in a southeasterly direction.
One who, with Prometheus’ fire,
Transmutes man into gold,
Who brings the glory of damnation to those not-of-Him,
To follow the One and with a faithful heart
Seals his divine spark
Aiming to reach one’s own bliss
Rapturously
On the left path.
A second gong sounded from the northwest. Again, the man instinctively snapped his head around.
Opus Magnum – Magnum Opus
As the last words faded away and silence manifested itself again with the restless crackling of countless small fires, a sudden shiver ran through the naked man. Freezing now, he felt cold sweat trickling down his back. For agonizingly long moments, he felt utterly lost.
“We shall begin.” A male voice with a distinctly British accent suddenly snatched him out of his paralysis.
4
“Never forget this. It’s our secret. Do you understand?” The boy was about twelve years old, and his sister might have been two years younger. “You must take good care of your little sister all of your life, and your sister will take care of you.” The little boy looked up and nodded silently. The man looked into his bright blue eyes and thought to himself: “They’re ready. They have strong characters.”
After all, he had nurtured, educated, and taught the boy and Elise early. “Wear your new name proudly because this name will accompany you for the rest of your life ... and from now on, address your sister only as Elise.” He consciously refrained from using Afrikaans, the children’s mother tongue, but spoke German because he knew that the two of them had already wholly acquired this foreign language. They got into the car and drove off.
The man brought the car to a halt in front of the gates of the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Welfare Home. Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata No. 1 broke off abruptly when the ignition key was removed. The man turned to the children in the back seat: “We have reached our destination.” On the drive from Munich to this home for difficult and behaviorally disturbed children in the church district of Fürstenfeldbruck, run by ordained nuns, no one had spoken a word. They had just listened to the music and followed their thoughts.
When they entered the welfare home garden on this slightly cloudy day of October 13, 1988, a nun was already waiting at the reception hall’s outer door, about fifty meters away. Sister Gabriele was the home’s Mother Superior. Both children looked at the man and ran over to the nun. The man turned around and left without looking back. His shoulder-length hair, grayed in some places and tied together in a braid, bobbed up and down as he went.
5
“This children’s home is embedded in a quiet and secluded forest colony,” Sister Gabriele said to the two newcomers. The ten pavilion-like buildings that lay before them were surrounded by spacious, fenced-in gardens bordering on the forest. About 150 children lived there, cared for by twenty nuns.
Elise looked at the skinny old woman who called herself Sister Gabriele and tried to guess her age. She noticed a ring on her third finger. To whom was the skinny nun married? She would ask her about it some other time.
Once inside the house, the two children took a seat in the common room while Sister Christel, the Sister in charge, went down the hallway to prepare their rooms for them. Sister Christel, who was swiftly doing the dusting, might have been in her fifties. She looked very strict. Not that the children minded. A welfare home was like a vacation camp to them.
In one corner of the large room, on a ledge, stood a cage, in which a small, yellow-green bird crouched on a perch. Full of curiosity, the boy approached the birdcage, and Elise followed him. The little bird greeted them with a bright trill.
A chubby boy and a cheerful nun approached them. The Sister bent her head slightly toward the children and said in a pleasant voice: “This is Hansi. The name of the budgie is Hansi. You may feed him, but later.” Smiling, she looked at the two children. “And my name is Hildegard. I am a novice, which means I am not ordained yet. What are your names?” Her pronounced Bavarian accent resonated in the air for a moment.
“G...good af...afternoon, Sis...ter Hildegard,” the girl tried to answer, but as always when she was excited, Elise stammered. “I...I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Elise.” The novice nun reached out her hand to the girl and nodded encouragingly.
“And who are you, young man?” The boy smiled fleetingly and said his name, the name that the man with the gray shock of hair had given him only about two hours before. “My name is Beo,” he repeated. “Hello,” said the chubby boy, “I’m Mario,” and grinned slyly. “Hello,” the two newcomers replied.
“Come, let me show you the house. The other children are coming home from school soon. The school is not far from here; it’s in the grounds.” Elise looked at the boy, who was now her brother. She knew him from before, not well, but at least she knew him.
A group of children came storming into the house, gesticulating noisily. A girl of perhaps nine or ten years of age approached the two siblings and gave a loud “Ooh,” then stepped back a few meters. She paced frantically back and forth, watching the two newcomers from a safe distance. She had bitten all her fingernails. Sister Hildegard put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and said: “Monika, everything is fine. These two have just arrived. They are brother and sister, and they are going to live here with us.” The crowd of children surrounded the two siblings. “What’s my name?” one of the boys asked cheekily, getting the question wrong and tugging at his right ear. Elise and her brother briefly glanced into each other’s eyes. They had understood where their home would be, from now on.
6
Lunchtime. In the common room, Sister Christel asked the children to sit at their tables. “Every morning, every noon, and every evening before dinner, one of you will say grace for all of us.” Sister Christel said. “Dear God, bless all that you have given us. And then we all say, Amen,” she added, addressing the siblings. “Every Thursday evening and every Sunday we go to Mass. You two are welcome to come along, but you do not have to. However, we would like to invite you to Mass.” The two siblings nodded.
7
The following Thursday, after Mass in the chapel, Sister Hildegard and another nun approached Elise and her brother. “Hello!” Sister Hildegard greeted them and asked happily: “How did you like the Mass?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued: “This is Sister Dorothy. She wanted to meet you newcomers. Sister Dorothy is an American, from our Austin diocese. That is a city in the state of Texas. We all call her Sister Dorothea. She will stay with us for a few years. Sister Dorothea is our Bible expert and speaks many ancient languages, even Coptic and Amharic.” A little shyly, the boy noded: “Pleased to make your acquaintance, dear Sister.”
“Let’s go for a walk,” Sister Dorothea said to Beo and Elise. Hildegard, the novice nun, left the two of them and went back to the chapel.
“Young man, tell me about you and your sister.” Sister Dorothea looked at the boy with a frozen smile. “There is nothing to tell,” Beo replied in a low voice.
The three of them made their way across a vast, neatly mowed meadow toward the basketball court. Red Tartar was what the children called the basketball court, but nobody knew why anymore. Nobody could remember how the court got its name. The last warm rays of the evening sun gently caressed the children’s bare forearms. It was peaceful here. The boy noticed that the nun was waiting for an answer.
He cleared his throat and began to recount: “The ordeal of being with a father who tortured us both mentally and physically was too much for not only us but also the Youth Welfare Office. Therefore, the Youth Welfare Office brought us here.”
Sister Dorothea’s gaze became stern, growing somewhat upset she fell back to her mother tongue: “What rubbish is this, the torture of ...?” Then she changed back to German: “No child speaks like this. In German, you say, our father mistreated us.” Her voice became softer again. Turning to the boy, she asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I would like to be a cook,” the boy said. Elise emulated her brother and added: “Oh, I would...I would...I would like to be a ballerina.” She thought that the nun would want to hear something like that.
“Don’t worry, you two,” the nun said. “You will be fine here. And one day, you will be adopted and given a new home, or you can stay here until you are eighteen and then start your life out there. But until then, this is your home, and we are your family. How well do you know the Bible? Do you even know it at all?” The children shook their heads.
“What religion do you know?” The boy answered: “We don’t know any religion; we grew up secular.”
“Such a word again, secular! Children just don’t talk like that,” Sister Dorothea grumbled at him. “Did you learn German from a dictionary? Isn’t German your mother tongue?” she demanded of him. When she received no answer, she raised her voice again: “You say, we were not brought up religiously!” “Okay,” the boy said. “Do you speak English, boy?” Beo remained completely calm and looked at the nun without saying anything. Elise stared into the nun’s eyes. “Never look at me that way again, child!” Sister Dorothea sharply rebuked the girl. Then, she asked something in Afrikaans. Slowly, Elise turned her gaze to the side. She looked past the nun toward a point in the evening sky. “Sister, you’re funny. You speak to us in languages we do not understand. I am bored. We are going to play.” The boy’s voice sounded gruff. “Come, Elise, let’s go.”
“How do you know that they were different languages?” Sister Dorothea asked in a piercing voice. Without looking back, the children continued their way to the playground. They had barely walked a few meters when the nun demanded in a loud, assertive voice: “Boy, stop! Elise, you too!” “By God, stop, I tell you, or I will punish you!” Sister Dorothea yelled once again, loudly. The children were not listening.
Then the nun spoke a single word, calmly but with clearly accentuated emphasis: “Minutemen.” The children stopped abruptly and turned to the sister in a flash. They looked at her calmly and waited for her to speak again. After a few seconds of silence, the nun said: “You know that we are here for you – now and forever.” Both children nodded briefly but very inconspicuously. “This here is and was our only unencrypted conversation,” she added sternly. The children looked at her calmly again and waited for the nun to continue speaking. The nun remained silent for a few more moments and continued: “From tomorrow onward, you will volunteer for Bible study with Sister Hildegard. Every day. As Sir Francis Bacon said – knowledge is power. Remember that very well. Very, very well. For the rest of your lives.” Both children confirmed with a brief nod and waited. A curt “Go!” from Sister Dorothea ended the instruction. The children nodded to the nun again. Then Sister Dorothea gave them some old rye bread and said: “Go and feed the birds with this.” The children hurried away and scampered to the edge of the lawn. No one had noticed their conversation.
8
When Elise crumbled the bread to feed the birds, she discovered a rolled-up piece of paper hidden beneath the crust. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and skimmed over the closely written lines. Then the boy took it and read. His lips moved silently.
Mission objectives:
1 It is desired that the two of you work together.
2 Whichever of you first acquires the priest’s keys to the chapel is the winner.
3 This is our first and only unencrypted conversation.
4 Correspondence to be exclusively by way of acrostic or telestic in German, as the old man taught you.
5 Fortnight, from the end of today’s mass.
6 If the goal is not achieved, your mission cannot be accomplished; you must get the keys at all costs.
The little girl took the paper back and ate it.
9
Vinka was a girl without friends. Because of her appearance and her red eyes, the other children kept away from her. Most of them were afraid of Vinka’s looks. She was underachieving in school, and the other children laughed at her for that. In such moments, Vinka always withdrew to the Red Tartar, the basketball court, whose floor was covered with an artificial red surface that reached all the way to the grass. She had chosen the small grandstand as her innermost refuge, which she would visit whenever she could no longer hold back her tears, just like today. The only one she could call a friend was a French girl who was far too fat for her age, although she always tried to eat as little as possible and was ridiculed by the other children as a baby elephant. Her fellow sufferer was called Eugenie. Her left eye was blue, and her right eye was emerald green.
Both were already in puberty, and a few months earlier, one of the nuns had given them a rudimentary explanation of the changes taking place in their bodies. The chubby French girl’s face was covered with pimples, so she did not dare to go to school. For Eugenie to learn to accept her body as God had created it, as Sister Christel put it, and to help her build up her self-confidence, the sisterhood decided, after some consideration, to send her to the supermarket. Thus, she should accept the will of God and grow by this experience. Eugenie did not care at all; she was incredibly lonely and suffered from the increased teasing the children subjected her to because of her appearance.
On shopping day, she listlessly followed Sister Brunhild to the nearby supermarket. While the nun was buying supplies for the home’s office, Eugenie spotted the display of magazines. Several rows of colorful covers aroused her curiosity, and she stepped up to the shelf with the music magazines. The world she encountered there was completely unknown to her because this kind of music was considered impure and was not allowed to be played or listened to in the children’s home.
On a cover, she suddenly saw him. She bent forward and read: “Human Apocalypse.” The band was called Human Apocalypse and at the microphone stood a man in brown suede pants, laced up on both sides all the way from top to bottom. His muscular upper body was naked, and his long hair swirled around the microphone. He was flanked on both sides by beautiful women in bikinis, who looked at him provocatively. Eugenie wondered if she could ever allow herself to walk around in a bikini without being ashamed of her appearance. The cover said, Sledge.
“Sledge,” she spoke out loud, and for a moment, sank into the image of the man at the microphone, thoroughly impressed. Without thinking, she reached for the magazine and swiftly slipped it underneath her sweater. Her heart was pounding like crazy, and dizziness seized her when she realized that she had just stolen something. “Eugenie, what are you doing?” Sister Brunhild’s voice sounded behind her. She turned around in panic and gazed into the nun’s stern eyes, dumbstruck. “That is not for you; get away from there and come here!” Eugenie did not utter a word and just nodded. “Sister Brunhild hasn’t noticed that I stole the magazine,” she breathed a sigh of relief. When the nun turned her back, Eugenie let the magazine slide down into her waistband and walked up to her.
“What have I done?!” She could not believe it. She was a thief! “Human Apocalypse,” she thought. She could think of nothing else. “Sledge,” she muttered to herself and wondered what kind of person that was. On the way back, she imagined meeting Sledge and the band Human Apocalypse.
It was already late afternoon, and the time for dinner was approaching. Eugenie still had half an hour left. She had run over to the Red Tartar, sat down in the bleachers, and excitedly leafed through the magazine. Finally, she was able to start reading the article about Sledge and Human Apocalypse.
She looked up briefly and gazed at Vivi, a mulatto from Lithuania whose real name no one could remember; it was Vytautas Varagas. He was playing basketball, alone as usual. She knew that Vivi, who was over 6 feet tall, had no friends either. He always played basketball by himself. Vytautas could have had friends because he was the strongest among the children in the home. But he was always alone and kept away from the others – a real loner. “Human Apocalypse” flashed through Eugenie’s mind. Curious, she pored over the pictures of the band. She experienced a feeling that she had never known and could not describe, and she felt a strange flicker of excitement in her stomach.
Eugenie had not noticed that the janitor had stepped on to the bleachers. The elderly janitor, as usual, wore a gray coverall and was pushing a mop in a red bucket in front of him. When Eugenie looked up, she saw the old man’s kind smile. “Well, how are you?” he asked in a gentle voice. “I didn’t mean to disturb you; I just wanted to clean the bleachers.” She gratefully registered that the janitor discreetly overlooked the magazine, although he was, of course, aware that such possessions were forbidden in the grounds of the children’s home.
Eugenie and Vinka liked the old man who always had a kind word for them. Once upon a time, he had wanted to become a monk but, in the end, he had decided against ordination because he felt he was not suited to the challenges of monastic life. Instead, he had become a janitor at the children’s home. The two girls often talked to the old man out on the Red Tartar, and he spoke sagely of ethical life. He looked at the magazine that Eugenie was holding in her hands and said: “You know, little one, even if you may not believe me, those glossy pictures are not real life. Life does not just consist of parties. Even those little starlets in the magazines sometimes cry secretly. They too have their fears and problems.” Eugenie smiled, realizing that the old janitor was so understanding, and replied: “These people are so beautiful and are loved by everyone.” A quiet, loving smile reappeared on the janitor’s wrinkled, stubbly-bearded face. “One day, you too will meet someone who will love you and whom you will love,” he said in a gentle voice.
However, Eugenie hated her fellow human beings for bullying her, and because she had to live in a welfare home, abandoned by her parents and marginalized by the other children. To break out of this oppressive reality, she withdrew, as much as she could, into the world of books and shaped her image of the world through the fate of her literary heroes.
Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, a book she had borrowed from the in-house library and devoured in one go, was one of the works she was particularly impressed by. Quasimodo, this pathetic figure for whom she felt nothing but compassion, suffered so much. They both endured the same fate, and he was treated as badly by Esmeralda as she was by the children in the home. She detested Esmeralda and anyone who was beautiful like her.
Later, she discovered the books of Emile Zola. She loved this author because she was convinced that his descriptions reflected real life, something these naive nuns tried to protect her from. After reading the Drunkard and Nana, she could not sleep for nights on end because she could not stop thinking about how Nana’s life had faded away into poverty and illness. And she kept remembering with horror how her heroine was robbed as she lay dying beneath a staircase. So, that was life. Eugenie did not want to love; never in her life would she want to love anyone. This was a promise she had made to herself.
Eugenie looked up, and her gaze wandered over the edge of the stand. She recognized the outline of the figures moving toward the basketball court, the small newcomer and his chubby sister, who could barely complete a sentence without stuttering about twenty times, and who was a good head taller than him even though she was a few years younger, arrived at the Red Tartar. Beo and Elise joined Eugenie and Vinka. And so, they were together again, the loose group of four outsiders, who were snubbed by the majority because of their respective handicaps. “Somehow, we are friends,” Eugenie thought.
The bouncing sound of the basketball died, and Vytautas came toward the other children. “Greetings, old man,” he turned to the janitor. The janitor nodded back in a friendly manner and said: “Soon, it will be dinner time, careful that you do not miss dinner because of your basketball.”
Vivi looked around and casually remarked, “That’s right; I’m hungry.” Then, he moved away, dribbling the basketball in front of him, toward the bungalows. “It is dinnertime for you, too,” the janitor pointed out calmly to the other four children.
They left the Red Tartar and were passing the administrative building and the chapel when a group of children came toward the four from the right side of the schoolyard. Their leader was Kilian. He was known for torturing animals. “What luck to have all the mutants together,” he yelled, and without warning, rammed his fist into Beo’s stomach. His buddy Mario grabbed a stone as big as an orange and threw it at Eugenie, who reflexively turned to the side and was hit in the left shoulder. Beo gasped for air while Eugenie howled in pain. Mario grabbed Elise by the hair and slapped her in the face. “You fat, ugly sow,” he bellowed. At that moment, Vinka stormed forward, hissing like a cat. “I’ll suck your blood,” she shouted, red eyes wide open. Kilian, Mario, and the other children stopped for a moment in shock and stared at Vinka. “Oh girl, you are so screwed,” Kilian yelled after he regained his composure, aimed a kick at Beo lying on the ground, and rushed at Vinka. Just as Kilian swung his foot out to kick her in the abdomen, Vivi dove in like a bolt of lightning, grabbed him by the collar, and hurled him into the bushes in one fell swoop. A second later, he brutally kicked the dumbstruck Mario in the side, so that he collapsed, groaning. After he was done with the two of them, he slapped those of the panic-stricken others who had not yet run off and chased them away with kicks. “We’ll get you when you’re alone,” Mario screamed in an angry, distorted voice from a safe distance and ran away, too. Vivi helped the four children up and said: “Let’s go to dinner, but don’t tell anyone what happened.” Sister Dorothea had observed the entire scene from a window on the second floor of the administration building.
