"How can you?" Rud boiled with indignation. "How can you say such a thing? ... And who are you to judge me in this way?"
"You're right," Patricia lowered her little head, "I'm nobody. I'm just a little girl who wasn't allowed to be born, a foetus cut up by surgical scoops. I've no right to judge people whose hearts suffered in the fight with other people. I'm sure I would be no better."
"I'm sorry, Patricia. I didn't mean to hurt you." Rud felt pity for her. "Neuheufel told me my preparation period is nearing its end. I'm sure I'll leave the Centre soon. I'll find Maria and tell her what I should have told her ages ago."
Patricia was silent.
"You see, I thought she was avoiding me because she knew I was maimed and I didn't want to be pushy. Now I'm normal again and that's what I wanted to tell her."
"What nonsense, Ruder. Anyone returning from Greater Punishment is in the same state."
Rud's face showed utter confusion and surprise.
"And sooner or later everybody returns to the normal state. Those who haven't been through Greater Punishment - like me or her - they know that. There's no need to talk about it; it's normal and it passes. Besides, we can do better: for instance, we can see how such a stitched up, healing face looked before the Punishment and how it will look after."
"So that means that when she saw me for the first time she didn't see that horrible, nightmarish visage but my normal face?"
"I don't know. If she wanted to she could have seen your normal face. I don't know, she didn't say."
They both fell silent.
"You know, those Interrogators use strange methods. Neuheufel, in order to put me off, showed me the registration photos of Maria naked. They were of such good quality that I could see every detail, every fault of her body. You know that she had one breast bigger than the other and very ungainly, sort of broken hips. Yet somehow ..."
"That's not true," Patricia interrupted him firmly. "Maria's breasts were the same size. I'm sure of that."
"How do you know?"
"I know because I've seen them. I asked her to show me what the breasts of a grown woman look like ... I needed to know that because before I leave the Centre I have to decide the age of my body."
Rud had difficulty restraining himself from asking what Maria's breasts looked like.
"And also for another reason . . ." the voice that reached his brain was quiet and hesitant, as if Patricia was very embarrassed. "I wanted her to put me to her breast like a baby ... to see what it's like ...."
"And?"
"And nothing. It didn't work. The nipple was too big to fit into my mouth."
"And she wasn't that unshapely either, was she? If she had broken hips I would have easily noticed ... I saw her figure, how she walked, how she moved."
"They must have shown you the photographs of some other girl. Maria didn't mention she had been photographed naked."
"No, the face was hers," he insisted, "though even that face was strange, swollen, unctuous, full of repressed animal lust."
"She wanted to stifle that feeling for you. That's what she was struggling with," said Patricia. "Anyway, what sort of photographs were they?"
"Well, the registration ones, with the pentagram and her registration number."
"Don't let them fool you, Ruder. They don't take such photographs; they've no right to. I think Neuheufel forged them to see your reaction. If they were provocative, showed her sprawling in a porno shot you wouldn't believe them. So he used a more intelligent ruse."
"Do you think he provoked the fight to have an excuse to arrest me and prevent me from seeing Maria?" he asked, more to himself than Patricia. "What a bastard ... And that's supposed to be Heaven," he sneered.
"Ah, Heaven ..." sighed Patricia. "I'll be leaving here soon, you know?"
"Really?"
"I want to see my ... those two who didn't want to be my parents ... I heard they're still here."
"Do you really want to see them?"
"All the Un-born say that they don't, they swear they'd never see them. But towards the end almost everyone goes to see them ... Somehow ... they want to know ... to see them. Both."
"Will you speak to them?"
"A few words, casually," she shrugged. "I don't want them to guess."
Rud fell silent.
Rud came to the conclusion that there was no point in arguing with Neuheufel, as it might only delay his meeting with Maria. After all, the Interrogator was his benefactor, to a degree. In the end R.ud even brought himself to apologise to Neuheufel for his bad temper. The apologies were accepted with understanding. The uncouth Interrogator, in his own peculiar way, liked his charge. Rud went back to writing essays and solving mathematical problems for Neuheufel. Only now he was more cautious and secretive. Occasionally he shared his food with the old men who could not leave their bunks. He was not doing it out of the good of his heart exactly, but because Maria used to do it.
"You know, Neuheufel, I thought Heaven would be different," he started a conversation with the Interrogator; the doubts had been gnawing at him for too long and in the end he could not bear it. "First of all what I miss here ..."
"There's nothing you could possibly miss here," snapped Neuheufel. He was in a good mood: his belly full, he sipped strong coffee through his teeth and, as was his way, spat the coffee grounds on the floor. The essay had been given high marks and he was feeling well disposed towards Rud. "Everyone's been here at some point ... The Galilean too ... I remember that day very well, though it was so long ago," Neuheufel fell into a reverie. "They brought Him on a Friday after knocking-off time. All the boys ran to see him. The Boss Himself interrogated Him. I couldn't come 'cause I was doing my shift below, but the boys told me later ... Holzbucher saw it all ... And then, when he was leaving, that was something, man," Neuheufel, steeped in memories, was talking to Rud as if to a friend, not to his charge. "What a light He gave off, I'm telling you ... White, white light ... You could see through the walls. We couldn't get on with our work, had to stop all the interrogations, every single one ... Then came the thaw, the releases. We had less work; until they started sending us new transports. I interrogated one of those two who came with Him, you know? He's still with us. The other one was released. He came out soon after the Galilean."
"His. .. His ... He ... He . . ." repeated Rud, obviously struggling. "Neuheufel, I can't say His name...
"You can't here," said Neuheufel. "No one can."
"But Neuheufel, we're all supposed to praise his name in Heaven," Rud was almost sobbing.
"And who said you were in Heaven, you fool?" Neuheufel's face set in the old familiar expression.
"You did, Neuheufel, in the Interrogation Room, down below," blurted out Rud.
Neuheufel made an indeterminate gesture with his hand.
"Oh," he said, "we say that to everyone. Regular procedure. It's to do with raising the spirits of your charge. Anyway, you felt like you were in Heaven here, didn't you Milankiewicz? It's all right, you're serving Lesser Punishment now."
"Lesser Punishment?"
"For you, Lesser Punishment means humiliation; Greater Punishment pain. You can't go on forever with Greater Punishment or you'd get used to it, and that's not the point. That's why the periods of Greater Punishment have to be broken up with periods of relief - the Lesser Punishment - so that you don't lose the scale of suffering."
"How long is the Punishment?" Rud asked, feeling the fear begin to squeeze his throat.
"It varies. You know that for some it will go on for ever. For some it will end, others get only Lesser Punishment. You see, it's all up to them. I've been observing them for generations: here, they're exactly like they were on the other side, not a wee bit better. When the pain stops, they go back to their old habits. They don't want to change. Look at yourself the moment the pain was gone you went back to your old wheeling and dealing and skirt-chasing. Had you realised earlier that you'd returned to your normal form you would've no doubt managed to seduce this ..
. And you want to get out of here, Milankiewicz?" the Interrogator finished with a question.
"Neuheufel, will I ever get out of here?" sobbed Rud.
"Eh, Milankiewicz! Milankiewicz!" roared Neuheufel, changing suddenly. "Are you trying to make me divulge an official secret?! Don't ask me, look for the answer in your own heart!"
"You said once that my preparation period was coming to an end, so what will happen to me now?"
"It's no longer any secret," Neuheufel shrugged his shoulders. "You'll be sent back on Greater Punishment. Not for the first time, nor the last."
"How much time have I got left? When are they taking me down below?"
"Tomorrow."
Waterloo, April-May 199o
The Mithraic Initiation
How mysteriously divine and ecstatic is the power of fire from the alder logs blazing in a fireplace. It awakens in us the ancient Aryan and Sumerian, our knees bend before the god of fire who still lives within us. The oldest and the most profound mass at which Man has ever officiated! The magnetism it spreads throughout the whole of our being introduces a mood of holiness.
The room in which Peter found himself had been created from a few cells of the former monastery by removing the dividing walls, their remaining ribs still visible on the ceiling. It had Gothic, stained-glass windows, some of them covered by a heavy curtain, and many books on the shelves which stretched across the walls from the floor to the ceiling. A huge table was covered with pots of begonias, old books in folio bound in leather, and the entire workshop of a writer and scientist - manuscripts, scalpels, quills and modern pens, amid rows of chemicals, retorts and lamps.
Any free space on the walls was covered by some polar species of moss and a collection of the skins of Javanese boas bearing hypnotic patterns, Cambodian, Peruvian and Maori masks, poisoned krises and Chinese execution swords. Everything bore witness to the host's love of danger and the unfathomable depths, and created an atmosphere suggesting the demonism of Life. The notes accompanying the skins of various animals on display stated that they had all been killed in self-defence.
The books bore imprints dear to the Polish eye - Washington, Irkutsk and Krakow. But there were also books from Bombay and Tokyo; obviously, the priest must have travelled widely to amass such a collection.
The library was equipped mainly for religious studies. It contained the works of Smith on Chaldaea, Lassen's on India, Cumont's study of paganism, and Tyrrel's and Radlinski's on modern religions. There were authors such as Jeremias, Loisy and Chwolson, ancient philosophers like Chrysyppus, Plato, Jamblichus, Heraclitus, Lucian of Samos, and classics of the Middle Ages - Kuzon, Mirandola and Copernicus. Whole walls were taken up by the naturalists - Bill, Darwin, Lyell, Suess, Strasburger, Kerner. Then there were editions of holy books from the East and a few hundred volumes of Acta Sanctorium by the Bollandists. One could also find here the works of modern thinkers such as Bergson, Poincare, Sorel, Simmel and Driesch. Most of the remaining space was occupied by piles of scientific and esoteric periodicals.
Among these wonders, which made Peter's face flush with excitement, he also found "The Life of Jesus" in an excellent Polish translation from the sixteenth century with handpainted miniatures - the rare edition of Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, the literature of Polish emigration, an entire wall of books by Rzewuski, Kraszewski, the great Polish romantics with Norwid, as well as contemporary writers, including those of the Young Poland movement. Only now did he feel the full extent of his longing to reach out, to fulfil his life by his own actions and deeds ...
He had left school to fight the Russian oppressor and thus, instead of initiating himself into the mysteries of Mendeleyev's chemistry, he would soon himself join the process of chemical decomposition in the moat of some fort, trampled by soldiers' boots. He looked at the open Bible with hatred, took in his hands a volume of Kelsos, the greatest enemy of Christianity, whose attack on the Cross was more devastating than that of Nietzsche in The Anti-Christ, and started leafing through the contemptuous accusations against "that ignorant rabble". Then, his eyes stopped at a point of great significance where all the cultures of the world seemed to meet.
"As Plato stated, there is only one road that brings the soul to Earth and takes it from Earth to Heaven, the one leading through the planets. As the Persian worshippers of Mithras also claimed there are two kinds of heavenly movements: planetary and stellar, and the passage of the soul through them leads through seven tall gates. The first gate is lead, the second tin, the third bronze, the fourth is iron, the fifth is made of alloyed metal, the sixth is silver and the seventh gold. The first is devoted to Chronos whose weight and slowness is that of lead; the second to Aphrodite whose softness and light compares to tin; the third to Zeus with its bronze threshold of death; the fourth to Hermes who, like iron, is good at all kinds of work, pliable and durable; the fifth to Ares who is a dangerous mixture; the sixth to the silver Moon; the seventh signifies the Sun which lends its colour to gold. The reason for such a division, as taught by Persian theosophy, is derived partly from Nature and partly from music.
Peter could not bear to read further, feeling locked behind the lead gate he had reached as a youth and now forbidden to pass through the other gates of life.
The priest had left to prepare a meal for him, and Peter took advantage of his absence to sneak into the other room, where he found a collection of portraits hanging on the walls. His eyes were drawn to one particular painting depicting a strange scene: in a room lit by candle-light and with a table groaning under the weight of food and crystals, stood a beautiful woman holding a rose, while a man, visibly in love with her yet with horror in his eyes, thrust a dagger through her body as if through a ghost .. .
The man, dressed in the splendid uniform of the Papal Guard, had a pale, demonic face. Peter looked closer and it seemed to him that the man bore a strong resemblance to his host, though much younger, with a youthful, proud and sensuous face, and without the terrible scar above his nose.
Further along the wall there were paintings from the 1863 uprising, and a portrait of Colonel Sierakowski with a dedication: "To Father Faust". To his surprise, Peter noticed an open coffin standing in the corner. It was filled with straw covered with a sheet and had a leather pillow inside. Did he really sleep in it?
Suddenly he heard the priest's steps and, like a schoolboy caught snooping around, his first reaction was to get back to the library; but then he stopped himself. A thought, cold and forbidding like the peaks of the Caucasus above a stormy sea of clouds, returned to his mind and from the chasm of his soul rose a sense of the utter futility of everything.
The priest brought in a pot of hot tea, big glasses, a huge chunk of black bread, radishes, salt and delicious-looking apples.
"Here is the prisoner's Christmas Eve supper," he said. "Allow me to share it with you."
Judging by the appetite with which the priest ate the apples, his everyday fare must have been even more modest. For Peter, apples had always been a fruit symbolising the joy of living. He looked at them, thinking of a verse from Slowacki:
He felt ashamed of the tears which rolled down his face and onto the floor; ashamed, for they went against his present mood of haughty pride: Yes, he was going to his death young, but he felt that in the light of cosmic justice he was not inferior to those old sages whose books he had just seen, for his life, as much as theirs, was the ray "that's never lost in darkness".
Suddenly, he was struck by the thought that the priest was a hypocrite who, having himself ascended the summits of intellect, fed others with belief in the obscure and dead canons of dogma...
He expressed the idea in a roundabout way:
"So, you believe, father, that it is only a storm that can open the heaviest of gates. But perhaps that gate should be approached with calm ..."
"Be it a storm or an ant's labour, I think it's a shame that the present Polish church does not have its own thinkers who might break through the old walls ..."
&nb
sp; "And?"
" ... and discover the new life."
"Hm ... And how could you kill, believing in nothing?"
"Was I to be that evil which kills in faith? Yes, I believe in nothing but the pain of living and the joy of sunshine."
"So, the mind cannot fathom the depths of our lives . .
"I don't seek those supposed depths. All you can find there are old, worn out beliefs. It is below the dignity of Prometheus."
"Prometheus! Or the thinker who stole secrets from the other world!"
The priest fell silent and Peter started examining the painting.
"Do you believe in ghosts?"
"Ghosts?" Peter looked at the priest as if he were out of his mind, but decided to speak openly.
"This Spanish lady in the painting doesn't seem to be an apparition from another planet."
"Hm, my philosophy is based on my own experience, and the Spanish lady was nothing if not a ghost...
The priest sank deeper into his armchair. The rolling clouds, the wailing wind, the darkness and that wonderful fire seemed to Peter to be an expression of what he felt inside: the demonic freedom of space above the mountains of life.
A long silence ensued.
A huge cat, striped like a tiger, sneaked in. It must have had a very bad temper for seeing Peter it started to spit. In the end it decided to ignore him and having jumped onto the back of the armchair it lay like a pillow, under the old man's head.
The priest blew out the ashes from the amber hookah and to Peter's horror filled it again with tobacco. Nevertheless, the youth took a burning splinter from the fire and, holding this spark of eternal fire in his chain-bound hands, passed it to the priest.
The one whom Colonel Sierakowski called Father Faust began to tell a story.
The Infernal Rose
I knew Cardinal Metastasio quite well. I was liked by his ladies, even though I was only a captain in the Papal Guard. For you ought to know, young man, that not for nothing did the Italians call him, as they did their king Victor Emanuel, "the father of the nation". Yes, the cardinal had a taste for a fine female body with the strong hips of a Maenad; a beautiful and wise head was merely an addition.
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