Till Kingdom Come

by Andrej Nikolaidis

  Moreover, if we vertically order all the numbers gained by multiplying the number nine by the numbers 1 to 10, we end up with an unusual order; the column on the left consists of the numbers 1 to 9, while the column on the right is an inversion of it, made up of the numbers from 9 to 0 in descending order.

  9

  18

  27

  36

  45

  54

  63

  72

  81

  90

  There are people, I discovered, who believe that a person’s date of birth reveals the number in whose power they will live – the number that conceals the secret of their destiny. I decided to play the game. I was born on 1.5.1983. 1+5+1+9+8+3 make 27, which means that my dominant number is 2+7, i.e. 9.

  Hang on, I thought, let me check if there are any other nines in my life. Olga was born on 9.5.1930, for example. I added up the numerals of her date of birth and ended up with the number 27 once more, i.e. 2+7, again nine. When did Olga die? 5.8.2003. Add up 5+8+2+0+0+3, and what do you get? Eighteen. 1+8, damn it, equals nine.

  I visited the site unhypnotize.com and found out an interesting thing. The book Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues by W. W. Wescott apparently describes the importance of the number nine for the Freemasons – “There is a Masonic order of Nine Elected knights, in which nine roses, nine lights and nine knocks are used.” The number nine, it says, is the number of the Earth ‘under the power of evil’.

  Looking through Google’s results for the search string ‘number 9 and the occult’ then bought me back to my date of birth. The first of May, as it turned out, was the second day of Beltane, the great pagan festival (or satanic, depending on your source). Beltane is an old celebration of fertility and the Earth goddess. The Celts sacrificed animals in the Scottish highlands on Beltane, I read, but every fifth year they also sacrificed humans, usually condemned criminals and prisoners of war.

  The Beltane revellers light a bonfire of nine different kinds of wood and dance around it naked. They drive a large shaft into the ground, which clearly has a phallic function. Then they dance around it in circles, the women clockwise and the men anticlockwise. It is as if their bodies form the two hands of a clock moving away from each other, until they meet again (at the point where the watch shows the number three – the ninth hour – I wondered?).

  Later I came across a Christian blog where priests offered advice to survivors of ceremonies that involved ritual abuse.

  The priests claimed that ritual abuse took place at three levels: As physical, spiritual and mental torture. As examples of physical torture they cited gang rape, the breaking of bones, hanging by the legs, the severing of body parts, burying a person alive, locking them in a cage, and lowering them into holes full of insects or snakes – basically the standard repertoire of horror and porno films.

  Spiritual torture involved breaking the victim’s will and making them believe there was no hope. The priests claimed they had come across cases where women were forced to bear children that the cult members took away from them at birth, or they were made to choose which other victims would be killed. During this abuse, their tormentors would read out from occult texts they believed in.

  The aim of mental torture, in turn, was to ensure that victims remained members of the cult, even if they led a seemingly normal life or kept returning voluntarily to rites such as the Black Mass and Beltane; and, most importantly, that they never reported their tormenters to the authorities.

  With most victims, ritual abuse became their lot at a very early age. Where did those children find comfort? In what we usually all too lightly call madness, the priests claimed on their blog. Those who managed to dissociate themselves from the horror would survive. They created a dissociative identity for themselves, I read – what psychiatrists used to call multiple personality disorder. I searched for a definition of dissociative identity disorder and felt a wrenching coldness, as if I had just opened a freezer where a gruesome secret was waiting for me. Dissociative disorders or dissociative identity disorders, it said on the screen, are marked by changes in a person’s sense of identity, their memory or consciousness. People with this disorder can forget important events from their past, or temporarily forget who they are, or even assume a new identity. They can leave their habitual environment and wander off. In an episode of depersonalization, people quite suddenly lose the feeling of their own ego. They can feel they have left their own body and are observing themselves from the outside. Sometimes they move as if they are sleepwalking, in a world that has lost its reality. Similar, but more intensive episodes occasionally occur in schizophrenia. However, the experiences of the schizophrenic person do not have the ‘quasi’ quality that the person with depersonalization reports.

  This site referred to a description of the satanic nature of Beltane taken from Beltane (2005) by the Joy of Satan Ministries, retrieved from http://www.angelfire.com/empire/serpentis666/Beltane.html.

  I couldn’t check it because the page was no longer active.

  I read a heated debate on www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=168329 about whether Beltane was a Satanist or just a pagan ritual. Someone mentioned the pentagram that the Beltane fires form when seen from a bird’s-eye view (or God’s?). Sceptics demanded photographs as proof

  So I entered ‘Beltane occult images’ in the search engine. The photos from a festival somewhere in Scotland showed naked people painted red. They were yelling and running across a field with flaming torches. A woman knelt in front of a man and reached out for his penis, while a couple beside them had (or at least simulated) sex standing up.

  I imagined I was in a forest, lying naked on the leaves. The air was cold, but I was enveloped in writhing, warm bodies. The smell of human flesh mingled with the smell of the earth. My fingers felt damp, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the bodily fluids of the woman beneath me or the moisture of the ground.

  I waited for the moment when the fire of the wooden phallus in the field nearby would throw its light on us.

  35

  Come on, you don’t believe in the devil, I said to myself. But me not believing, me knowing that the devil doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean they or she didn’t believe. When has the non-existence of something ever been a reason not to live one’s life by it and to kill in its name? Things that don’t exist, but which people believe in, produce consequences much more real than things that exist and no one believes in. What is world history if not a tale of bloodshed in the name of nation and religion – those ghosts of culture and identity?

  Confronted with another of my mother’s terrible secrets, I did what I normally did when I wanted to forget what I was struggling to understand, or didn’t dare to try: I fled from the unbearably specific into the unbearably general. Thinking about the miserable state of the world is a real consolation compared to thinking about the poverty of one’s own existence. A dirty little secret common to all initiatives and movements to make the world a better place is that people work towards bettering the world so as not to have to work on themselves. Few things are as relaxing as launching into a furious tirade about the miserable state of civilization, the human race and the planet... Every critique of so-called objective reality has to end in a farce, and the proponent of a better world as a comedian. As far as I was concerned, the world was perfect: It only existed so I’d be able to complain about it. I walked in circles through the flat and recited the obvious; invoking reason in the face of their convictions is about as effective as invoking statistics about droughts when a flood is swallowing up whole cities and bearing down on your house and your library – your temple of reason.

  Surrounded by people with such firm convictions and such weak reason, where can you run?

  In a country where expectant parents who find out the baby will be a girl say, ‘let’s hope she’s pretty rather than clever’, and where there’s
no greater joy for parents than to produce a dim-witted macho to continue the family line, where can you run to?

  My fury grew, and with it my hunger. I opened the fridge, but there was nothing except ice and Coca-Cola. I called a taxi with the plan of going to a good restaurant near the airport, where I would be able to have a decent meal, knock back a few drinks, and so I hoped, at least briefly forget about my mother, the shepherds, the flock and their convictions.

  I got in the back. So as to forestall any form of communication, I told the taxi driver I had a splitting headache and needed quiet.

  On the road out of the city we were nearly killed by a bald idiot in a BMW, who came flying into the roundabout and cut across our path.

  I exploded.

  “What can you do but stop that animal and put a bullet in his brain, right here by the roadside?!” I raged. ‘Shouldn’t the police shoot drivers like him? I mean, seriously, having a police force only makes sense if they publically execute people like that. What else is the point of a repressive apparatus? That’s how it is, and that’s why I’ve never wanted any form of power for myself. Every attempt to make the world a better place necessarily demands mass executions, and I don’t have the stomach for that. I would willingly applaud, but I couldn’t order killings myself. That’s how things are, especially in countries like Montenegro, where the brutishness in people can only be driven underground by the harshest repression. Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo aren’t proper states, just like Montenegrins, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Albanians and Kosovars aren’t civilized peoples, but herd-like populations. You can’t even regulate the traffic here without summary trials, let alone make a fairer society.’

  The driver followed my tirade in stunned silence. I saw the fear in his face via the rear-view mirror. Respecting all the traffic signs, he drove me to the restaurant, snatched the money I held out to him and fled as fast as he could.

  I wolfed down a giant, rare steak and ordered a double black Johnnie. I kept drinking until closing time, and then the waiters joined me. When we finally left the place, I was too drunk even to get in a taxi. The good people took me to a nearby motel. On the way they removed all the money from my wallet. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. They were at least considerate enough to leave my credit cards. They had drunk all night on me – that’s the sort of kindness that touches people’s hearts – so they felt the need to return the favour.

  36

  Zonked out as I was, I missed four calls from Maria. When she realized she wasn’t going to reach me, she sent a text message: Goran has killed himself.

  It didn’t fully hit me until I was in the taxi and we were driving past Lake Skadar. I needed that confrontation with the beauty of the landscape to make me register what had happened. Beauty is so difficult because it’s always completely out of context and there’s no place for it here. The cruelty of existence is only bearable because people are such pathetic creatures. Horrible things happen to us, and we deserve horrible things. Full stop. Whatever happens to us can be sad, but not unfair. And yet beings as pure and poorly equipped for the slaughter as Goran, ought to be exempt from the logic of existence. When what is good and innocent is exposed to the laws of the world we live in, all reason and all consolation vanish. Since that’s how it is, I calmly accepted all the torment and torture, the industry of death and all the atrocities people have done to others, but fell to my knees at news of children burning dogs alive. We’ve been taught to live with the history of our race, which is nothing other than a history of atrocities. But sometimes the madness of so-called normality becomes unbearable. That’s why I think that when Nietzsche collapsed over the flogged horse in Via Carlo Alberto in Turin on 3rd January 1889, it wasn’t a moment of madness but one where his mind finally broke through all that had previously shackled it, an hour of the greatest lucidity and the purest cognition, so complete that afterwards there was no return – an hour of confrontation with horror, face to face, after which the only way of escape did lead into madness.

  I called Maria. Through her weeping, she told me what had happened. Goran had taken her out to dinner the night before at the newly built hotel in the Old Town. It had been a real feast. One dish followed another, all of the very finest, accompanied by a connoisseur’s choice of wines. What’s the occasion, she asked him. Let that be a surprise, said Goran. She felt that he enjoyed every moment of the evening, talking about me and the three of us, reminiscing about our times together, and coming up with a host of old memories that had long since faded for Maria. They said goodbye heartily, with a hug. He stayed to finish off the bottle of Chilean red. He paid, gave the waiters an excessive tip worth as much as their Sunday pay, and asked them to bring another bottle while he smoked a cigar on the terrace: a good Primitivo, if you please. Then he went out and jumped.

  37

  I went by taxi to the cemetery below the Old Town. Goran’s father could hardly wait to see the last of the body. He didn’t want any condolences, ceremony or speeches, only for the corpse to be lowered into the earth as soon as possible. I found him at the gate of the cemetery. In spite of everything, I felt the need to say a few words and give him a firm handshake. He just stood there, visibly disturbed by the unpleasant obligations his son had foisted upon him. He didn’t even look at me when I walked past to join Maria, who was standing at the open grave dressed in black and sobbing inconsolably.

  Goran’s father hurried the gravediggers until they had finished. At that moment, Goran’s sister threw herself onto the mound. She crammed soil into her mouth, so we couldn’t make out what she was trying to say, but it seemed she was begging him for forgiveness, promising she didn’t know it would be like this, and swearing she had never imagined her husband was capable of doing what he did. Her father strode up, jerked her by the hair and dealt her a fierce slap in the face. He glanced at her full of contempt and then went up to Maria.

  “Stop that whining,” he hissed. “You should have jumped with him. You’re going to do it sooner or later anyway. That weakling! As soon as he was born I knew he was weak and would bring shame on the family. I’m going now, to get away from all the disgusting things people are saying about us,” he said so that all could hear him. He was the first to leave the cemetery, like an offended guest who demonstratively leaves a gathering.

  Later, Maria and I had coffee at the quay, and she read out sections of articles about Goran’s death. It was devastating that we as his closest friends – his true brother and sister, as he used to call us – had not noticed the glaring signs of the coming tragedy. We learned about the reasons for our best friend’s death from the morning papers. I had been busy with the troubles caused by my mother, Maria had woes with her own, and we had totally forgotten about Goran, it’s true. His fall lasted for months, two whole years even, and that last night it just ended on the rocks below Kalaja. If one of us had reached him a hand it may not have saved him, but at least he wouldn’t have died feeling totally alone, deserted and betrayed by those closest to him.

  Goran approved loans to people he shouldn’t have: To poor people, when it was obvious they wouldn’t be able to pay it back, and to desperate people prepared to cry and grovel in his office, to kiss his hands and bless him when he gave them the money in breach of all the bank’s guidelines. He approved dozens of loans like that to people who later didn’t respond to his calls, avoided him in the street, and ultimately drove him from their doorstep, hurling insults when he came to ask them to repay their debt because otherwise it would fall on him. He gave a loan to his sister’s husband, twenty thousand euros, for which she had been begging for weeks; the rat gambled away a third of the money that same night and lost the rest by the end of the month in failed black-market operations. Goran also gave an astronomical amount to Radovan. That swine had money and could have paid his debt, but he still didn’t. That’s how people have become rich and successful from time immemorial, by abus
ing the trust of a good person, screwing them over, and driving them to their death.

  Finally, in imminent danger of imprisonment, Goran took out a loan in order to pay off part of the other people’s debts, and then another to pay off the first loan. But then it was all over. They summoned him to the bank’s central office in Podgorica and gave him one week to pay back all the money, otherwise they would hand him over to the prosecutor’s office and impound all his family’s assets. ‘This has never happened to us before,’ they told him at the end of the meeting. ‘Embezzlement yes, we’ve had that, but a case such as yours, where you pay off the debts of the people you gave loans to... Do you realize how much this goes against the very principles of banking?’ a clerk who had been at the meeting told journalists: ‘How could you believe those people?’ I asked him with disbelief as he was leaving. While he was waiting for the lift he just said, ‘They’re good people, and in different circumstances they would have done the right thing.’ She was rewarded for her confession with a little portrait at the bottom of the page – taken when she was younger and more attractive, I cynically presumed.

  Maria and I sat in silence, smoking and watching as night fell. She went off to the toilet. There was excitement at the next table, one of the teenagers claimed to have seen a pod of dolphins. The others unsuccessfully tried to take snapshots of the animals with their mobiles so as then to post them on social networks. The horde of juveniles gambolled around the café with their electronic gadgets pointed out to the sea. When they finally calmed down and went back to their seats, a boy with a piping voice said that dolphins ought to be killed because they were pests. His uncle was a fisherman, and dolphins ate fish out of his nets. The girls felt sorry for the dolphins at first – they’re so cute! – But in the end they all agreed that if they needed to be killed, what could they do about it? The females of the species now opted out of the debate and decided to hang around on fashion websites until the males returned from the hunt. The males, indeed, were sharing their experience of what was the most effective way of killing a dolphin? They started with the individual animal: You throw a fish from the boat, and when the dolphin comes up you harpoon him. Later they thought of mass executions; you throw a few sticks of dynamite at the pod of dolphins. Within a minute, the boys had moved on to genocide; you fill an old fifty-litre tub of house paint with nails and twenty kilos of dynamite, attach a long fuse and lower it fifty metres down on a rope; dolphins are curious creatures, and the whole pod follows the tub. When it goes off, it’s like a miniature atom bomb. Nothing is left alive down there.