As he watched him try the acacia wood tools specifically designated to ‘operate on the Ark’, he hesitated for a while. Noticing David’s mind gradually calming down as he handled the acacia wood tools, he opted to wait a bit longer. Sadly, all this lucubration and his own mild irritation at the human’s irrational lingering mistrust distracted Geoffroy too much: only too late he sensed a larger group of ‘drifters’ coming through the aperture in the crumbling wall. By then even David had noticed, and both prepared to fight them back. Instinctively, Geoffroy went on the attack to protect David and quickly killed a few. Eventually he sensed someone who caught them from behind had killed the remainder of them. Severian was back, blocking his presence so thoroughly he momentarily alarmed Geoffroy.
The false alarm passed, now in very good spirits, Severian share some news with them: first, a group of thugs on which he had stumbled would never again try to rape a couple of adolescents caught making out in a dark alley; second, and more importantly, after a copious feeding, he had managed to contact the others at the hotel. He had also brought a hand tool and a long roll of composite tubing—of sufficient diameter to allow not only far better ventilation, but also sustained phone contact between this underground room and members of the group staying at the nearby hotel. Having told David and Geoffroy this, Severian had to go back to get it—since he had dropped it on his way, to fight the ‘drifters’. When he came back, Severian was all smiles: whether the good news, the scare, or Geoffroy’s defense of David, had noticeably diffused the tension and mistrust between them.
“It’s now time we pry apart the two halves of the lead sarcophagus,” he said, “so we can both have a good grip and pull evenly, to minimize vibration. I will endure the pain and help Geoffroy do this—but don’t expect me to do anything close to precision work near the Ark.”
“Indeed,” agreed Geoffroy. “I read in David’s mind that Milady Sól sternly warned against subjecting the Ark to excessive shear forces.” David nodded, his face softening, now appreciably far less hostile towards him.
“Now, it will be your time to shine, David,” Severian instructed. “Let’s turn off all lights. Haim said the Ark has been in darkness all this time, and we must ‘respect its ancient slumber’. We will open the ‘cocoon’ for you, but of course we cannot—and won’t—touch the Ark. In darkness, Geoffroy will get inside your head, become your eyes, and guide your hands. Remember your mission: the shards, go inside the Ark; and the tallit, with the stones from those places of death, goes on top of it, between the images of the angels, not touching them. If Haim is right—and, admittedly, he has many more doubts than he admits to—once you are done, we might not need to bother closing this ‘cocoon’.”
“Now, please go prepare, cleanse at the tunnel, and come back when your body and mind are ready,” Geoffroy suggested, “Please do not forget your shofar, try to leave your misgivings behind, so, by letting us be your eyes, we can guide your hands in the darkness.”
David just nodded and went to the ‘cleansing zone’ to prepare. In the meantime, Geoffroy and Severian held the wedge with pincers and slowly but steadily pushed the wider wedge, originally intended to raise the Ark’s lid more if necessary, tapping on it with a stone, the size of a bowling ball, until the lead sarcophagus deformation created a trench wide enough to allow them to clearly see the surface of the Ark as they inserted their fingers—after all, for them, not touching anything other than the lead ‘cocoon’ was also a matter of avoiding death.
Working together, the two vampires pulled and steadily to pry open the trough until the top of the Ark became exposed. Severian then endured some more excruciating pain and continued pulling—long enough for the two distorted lead sarcophagus halves to allow David easy access to the Ark from above and from the side. That way, David could use the smaller acacia wedge to lift the lid and drop the three shards of the Tables of the Law in it, as planned. Since the larger wedge Geoffroy had accidentally touched, hopefully the smaller one would do the trick.
Opening the lead sarcophagus as delicately as possible had demanded the utmost concentration—perhaps, once again, too much concentration by both vampires: hardly had they finished prying the lead cocoon open when Geoffroy had to dash, to save David again, from another ‘drifter’ that had appeared out of nowhere, and was sneaking up behind him, ready to pounce.
After quickly killing the trespasser, still dripping blood, Geoffroy cautiously approached David and whispered in David’s ear: “Look behind you! Remember you’re a man!”
David started laughing and replied in Latin: “Respice post te! Hominem te memento! Tertullian’s “Apologeticus” 33, isn’t it? This not my triumph, not even our triumph yet. But I shall strive to be more careful. Thank you for saving my life once again.”
“I’m impressed with our knowledge of the Latin classics. You are most welcome. And indeed, we haven’t triumphed yet, and this is getting a bit too crowded for comfort. So, are you ready to do your part?” Geoffroy asked.
David nodded. “I have only one life and one soul to give, and many, way too many to save—so, I’d better be ready, I guess,” he replied and began walking towards the Ark.
Before entering the dark zone, even if this tallit was anything but kosher, David recited the prayer prescribed to put it on. Oddly, once he did put it on, despite his massive musculature, it suddenly seemed so heavy he had trouble advancing. His thighs and shins trembled. His back started to arch in a very unseemly way. In his mind he recited Shemot, Exodus, 25:22, trying to repress a shiver. “Once you approach the Ark, you might be carrying more than the physical weight of the fabric and the stones, my friend. Let your faith guide you, and our love, strengthen you. And remember: this offer, you must make of your own free will. If you’re unsure, abstain,” such had been Haim’s final word of advice at the castle, right before he wished him ‘Leich l’Shalom! — go toward peace, which in Hebrew denotes not just well wishing for a journey, but hope the traveller should go toward the next level of shleimut, or spiritual perfection. ‘Leich l’Shalom, David!’ had also been his father’s last words, and he almost heard them now again, echoing in the room, as the voices of his father and Haim’s became one and the same. “Abstain, right? Really, Haim?” he thought.
Short of breath, tears rolling down his eyes, inexplicably feeling again the need to make sure his father would rest in peace, he mumbled: ‘Leich b’Shalom, Abba mispar ekhad!’—and those words, uttered on an impulse, had suddenly seemed to change him; and also, as inexplicably, they made the weight on his back far less unbearable. Feeling stronger, David now took a deep breath, swerved his spine backwards, planted his feet firmly on the ground, and forced his body to obey him.
Thus, slowly, side-by-side, David and Geoffroy—at sufficient distance to prevent splatters—walked back into the dark room, where humans could barely distinguish silhouettes, lit by the pale glow of the lights in the tunnel section behind them. But then, as planned, Geoffroy got in David’s mind and his eyes started to see the surroundings as vampire eyes would.
For a long moment, after the initial shock, David contemplated the Ark, in awe, admiring every detail of a sight no one had beheld in twenty-six centuries. His heart kept beating like a drum, his eyes dissolving into tears, and his every nerve fiber sharing in some of the agonizing pain Geoffroy was enduring.
For this momentous occasion, not only David’s hands were clean: he was wearing white wool gloves, made of wool and nothing else; he carried the smaller, clean acacia wedge; and also, inside a chest tallit, a tallit katan that he kept in a cotton bag hanging from his neck, he carried the three slivers of the Tables of the Law. Instinctively, yet again feeling overwhelmed by it all, he started reciting more than singing “Avinu Malkeinu”.
Struggling not to tremble, he pushed the wedge with his right hand, helping the left one only guide it and apply pressure on it, not even the left glove ever touching the acacia wedge. Resting untouched for millennia, the lid had required pushing very hard
to yield, first to insert the wedge; and then, even more, to rotate it ninety degrees and sufficiently widen the gap without having recourse to the larger wedge. Twice he feared the wedge might break and twice he though his heart had left his chest. But he persisted.
Only once the gap became wide enough he would dare dropping inside the Ark the shards he kept in the tallit katan. Now his mind was a storm of raw emotions: guided by Geoffroy, from time to time his eyes swerved, as if the pain inflicted by the Ark were too much for even an older vampire to bear. His own feelings of uncertainty, doubting whether what he was doing was right or wrong, made for a few starts and stops. His every gesture, choreographed with Haim ad nauseam at the castle, using even holographic models to train, made him so self-conscious he started to struggle—trying “not to commit any more sacrilege than the strictly indispensible”, as Haim had enjoined him—yet determined not to miss a step. To help maintain self-control, he kept singing, searching for the courage he needed, always trying to neither skip a bar nor forget a word.
Cautiously, he withdrew his hand from the wedge, now kept firmly in place by the lid’s considerable weight. With both hands free now, David took the tallit katan from the bag hanging from his neck. Not daring to stick a trembling hand under the lid, he simply let the shards fall into the Ark’s dark interior, folded the tallit katan, put it back in its bag, slowly turned the wedge back until it was again horizontal, and slowly but steadily withdrew it, sweat running down his forehead as it stalled, three times, three times his breath almost failing him—but never once did he stop singing.
Reassured after successfully taking the first step, slowly, trembling less, he took another deep breath, and took off his tallit gadol with the fastened stones, to fold it, as he should. He looked at it and, for an instant, stood immobile, overcome with horror: at first glance it appeared one of the stones had fallen off. However, on closer inspection, he realized vampire eyes saw that type of stone as almost the same color and texture as the fabric. The stone was, very much, still there. Reassured, he folded the tallit, neatly and respectfully, and then, took a deep breath and slowly placed it between the two angels.
During his very slow and nervous “Avinu Malkeinu”, which so far had not had one single faux pas, instead of “Shaná Tová”, a happy new year, unintentionally, instinctively, David deviated, saying: “Tatir t’zrurá”, free those bound in knots; “Palat Nepheshim”, Deliverer of souls; “Aná bechoach”, I implore you—and as he did, he fell to his knees, crying, exhausted, now again suddenly feeling an unfathomably heavy, crushing weight, being lifted off his shoulders, as if by an invisible hand. How or why this pasul mixture of kabala and the most sacred Jewish prayer had just come to him, in a moment of supreme horror, facing an abyss no one had approached for twenty-six centuries, he knew not.
Haim might not have approved—but, having done it, David now felt neither pride nor shame, just an instinctive sense of duty accomplished. Regardless, what he had done was strange, strange enough to perhaps never tell anyone. Even stranger, as he spoke and sang, his voice had not seemed his own: instead, it had echoed a bit like Lilith’s.
How could that possibly be? Nonsense. Distractions. Mere distractions. He knew he shouldn’t get distracted. But now he was feeling cold, to-the-bone cold. Something wasn’t quite right. Had he done something so wrong Death was now about to claim him? A horrible cold ran over his spine—but upwards. It was getting cold. The room was getting cold.
Only then David snapped out of his ruminations and recognized what it was: the swirls, the tiny tornadoes that had crept on so many cemeteries and places of genocide, were now all converging to this room, the room holding the Ark—and the room itself indeed was becoming cold as Death itself. The moment had come to test the riskiest assumption in Haim and Sól’s entire ‘theory’. If they were wrong on that point, all Hell, would, literally, break loose.
Hands trembling, chapping from the cold, glad he had overcome claustrophobia, David grabbed the shofar, took a deep breath, began sounding it, and didn’t stop until he got to the last of the hundred and one horn blasts. When he was done, quite short of breath, he held it firmly in his hands, as if about to sound it again, waiting.
Fortunately, his wait was brief: seconds before his last note had completely died down in the room, a wind—no longer cold, but pleasantly warm instead— started blowing the shofar, a sweet melody David could only listen to, mesmerized, losing all notion of time and place. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the wind stopped and the shofar became silent again. Exhausted, once more, he fell to his knees, and the painful impact against the hard floor ended his reverie.
At some point between the shofar gone silent and his knees hitting the ground, just thankful to be alive but unable to tell exactly when, David started to notice a peculiar hum—not so unlike that which sometimes precedes an earthquake. First a barely audible whisper, it gradually intensified, until it became a tremor that shook the entire room, powerful enough for David to fear the entire underground might collapse and kill him.
It was then when Geoffroy, drained by the effort, briefly disengaged from David’s mind. Suddenly lost in almost total darkness, David recoiled. Thankfully, noticing his distress, immediately afterwards Severian entered his mind, thus allowing him to see in the dark again. But by then the Ark was gone, having left behind only the distorted lead sarcophagus, surrounded by an oval mark on the floor, not so unlike the burn mark produced by the liftoff of larger space rockets.
This time round, as Geoffroy helped David stand up, the latter instinctively hugged him, still crying and shaking, paying no heed to the vampire’s torn, blood-soaked and foul smelling jumpsuit. “Seems the winds have vanished, and the Ark is gone,” hinted Geoffroy, a bit shocked by David’s effusiveness. “Congratulations, Freer of Souls!”
“Have we done it? Have we really done it?” David asked, to no one in particular.
“Well,” replied Severian, “we’re still here. Let’s see. Let there be light!” he said lighting up the ‘undies’s front beams. “The world is still here. The Ark clearly is not. The cold winds are gone. Yes, you have freed those souls and averted a disaster. So, I’d say it’s now time we take all we can of these archaeological materials and precious stones and get out of here. Hopefully the Countess, Siegfried and Sól will find a way to catalogue everything and send those artifacts to the right museums for display.
But now, we have to go—and fast. There are too many ‘drifters’, precisely, drifting into this place—and this night isn’t going to last forever either.”
Geoffroy and David nodded. Shortly after, having loaded a few loose items in the ‘transparent suppository’, the three were on their way to the hotel. Less than half an hour later—after taking care of yet two more ‘drifters’—they had reached a tunnel, right below the backyard garden at the hotel the Countess had booked in exclusivity for a week.
When they emerged between the perfectly manicured hedges there, the two trucks were waiting for them.
Of necessity, what should have been a joyful reunion was, instead, a bit strange at first. Regardless of how convincing Severian explanation of Conrad’s fate and Geoffroy’s presence in his place might have been, a few tense moments followed. All the same, Severian reclaimed his role of ‘general manger’ and, in less than an hour, leaving Tony’s people to deal with just a handful of obstreperous Wotanists, they were on their way to the castle, mostly in silence, letting hugs and accolades now do the talking.
Only when passing Auxerre on the A6, did the Countess finally allow herself a long exhalation, a broad smile and—of course—a toast, pulling from a tall black box one massive bottle of obscenely expensive champagne she had saved for the occasion.
“So, you are indeed the ‘Freer of Souls’, David. Aren’t you?” she said pouring him some champagne.
“Freer of souls?” asked Tony, who had spent a good part of his life in London, “Isn’t that something from Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage�
��?
“Yes!” agreed the Countess. “You know, after more carefully analyzing some of the things that were done in the past in the name of religion, I have decided that, when Siegfried and Sól give me my first grandson, I will spare him being called Theodosius. Instead, I might convince them to call him Byron.”
“Now, that’s an interesting name for a French count!” said Severian. “But now,” he added, in a whisper, “I too need a drink—so I shall bid you all ‘au revoir’.” Moments later, after a quickly waving goodbye, he flew away from the truck in movement.
“I will do the same,” said Geoffroy. “Severian has invited me to stay at his place until we sort out a few issues. Tony: for now, your ‘Oracle’ begs your forgiveness. I also give you my word: we shall ‘catch up’ very soon. To all of you, I will now bid ‘au revoir’ as well!” he finished, flying away in the same general direction as Severian.
“Now, Docteur David, do not pay any attention to those clowning vampires,” chuckled the Countess, pouring more champagne in Tony’s glass. “My grandson—I don’t know how, but I know he’s going to be a grandson—will be, like his father, his mother, his uncle and his aunt, my dearly departed husband and myself, a citizen of the world. In the “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, Le Cosmopolite says, in French, ‘L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuillété un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont réconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais ni les fatigues.’ Do you know what that means?”
Quest for the Ark Page 34