“Supposing,” said my prosecutor, “that the world still exists for that long—which is most unlikely, for our Lord God will not let the souls of the dead languish in purgatory for centuries—how can you see such a thing? Is it magic potions that turn you into a sibyl? Hemlock? Spurge? Black grain?”
I shrugged. “I don’t need a potion for it. Such visions appear to me in dreams. It’s … it’s like a memory of another time that still lies ahead of us.”
“Confess it: Do such … memories come to you during liaison with—”
The judge raised his hand. “How can you be certain that these dream images are visions of the future and not confusion, lies, and deceptions insinuated by the devil?”
The assistant and the dean nodded in unison.
“I don’t know,” I conceded.
“Oh, she will reflect on it and reveal it to us,” declared my prosecutor. “She will—”
The judge interrupted him impatiently. “And how will people fly? What do your visions show?” he asked me.
“With machines that can take off into the air like birds. Mechanical birds.”
“Machines? Not with the power of the mind?” he asked.
I could tell by his face that his interest had faded.
The dean unrolled another document. “This is the statement of Sebastian Melker, a groom in the service of His Excellency the archbishop of Cologne. He reports on an event on St. James Day of this year near Zeltingen on the upper Moselle, of which he was witness and victim. ‘It was a cloudless, sunny day when suddenly in the clear blue sky a storm appeared. My first thought was that it must have been a weather spell, for the occurrence was inexplicable and quite violent. I sought shelter for me and my horse in a barn in the open country and found there a young woman who upon my entrance furtively slipped some herbs into the saddlebag of her donkey. I suspected at once that she was a witch, who had through the burning of certain herbs performed a weather spell in order to ravage the fields and particularly the surrounding vineyards with hail. I detected the smell of burning, but intermingled with a much fouler stench of rot and flatulence and other disgusting vapors. It was immediately clear to me that I had disturbed someone here in the midst of a liaison. And with those infernal effluvia that could mean only one thing: I had surprised the witch and the devil in flagranti. I looked around and indeed at the barn door I caught sight of a dark-skinned figure with a snoutlike face and a goat’s hoof. I prayed to the Almighty for support and bravely charged at the figure, but before I reached the door, I felt a blow to my chest from an invisible hand, which flung me back five or six paces. I drew my knife and bravely charged a second time at the unearthly figure. Once again I was pushed back by an invisible hand, and this time so forcefully that I fell down and lost consciousness. When I came to, my head hurt, for I had hit it against the threshing floor, and in my chest my breathing stabbed me so sharply that I could barely keep myself in the saddle and for two months was incapable of doing my duty in the stables of His Excellency. Both the dark figure and the witch with her donkey had vanished from the barn when I regained consciousness. I recognized that young woman. She is a vagrant known in the city as the Roman woman and had previously lodged with the widow of the master baker Bittner on Holzgasse. I testify to that before God, our heavenly Father. Amen.’”
That mendacious, sanctimonious scum!
“Do you confess that you were the witch referred to in the statement, whom the groom surprised during liaison with the devil?” asked my prosecutor.
“I’m not a witch, and that incident occurred completely differently!” I exclaimed indignantly.
“But you admit that you are the person who was found in the aforementioned barn.”
“Yes. But the incident happened completely differently. That perfidious scoundrel of a groom—”
“You’re speaking of a faithful servant of the archbishop, a righteous, pious man. Mind your words! We will have you flogged if you make defamatory remarks.”
“—attacked me and wanted to do violence to me. Someone else came—”
“Aha! And that someone—”
“—came, thank God—”
“Careful what you say!”
“—to my rescue. I didn’t see him. I don’t know who he was.”
“Did you smell, or at least … sense him?”
The judge, who had sunk back into his lethargy, straightened up and announced with his soft, hoarse voice, “I order an examination in search of signa diaboli by doctores medicinae of the local university.”
The dean eyed me scornfully. That young man had a merciless self-righteousness that nothing could challenge, and at the same time a narrow-minded and know-it-all ignorance, with which the most pious among the pious are often afflicted. It gave him deep satisfaction to humiliate me, to injure me, even to annihilate me. And all the while he apparently still had the feeling of doing God’s work.
So I would be strapped down naked on a table and searched for adventitiae mammae, for superfluous nipples, so-called witches’ tits, with which I nursed my offspring spawned in liaison with the devil. I would be pricked with silver needles in every birthmark, in every wart, to find out whether blood flowed. My genitalia would be examined to determine whether wounds or scars indicated violent or perverse intercourse—succubus or incubus.
Usually that majus argumentum et satis firma probatio—in Albertus Magnus’s terms—which permitted the conclusion of a successful possession by the devil, was produced the night before the examination by the responsible torture master and his servants, who were granted the rough fun of doing it like the devil—thus creating a fait accompli.
The triumphant grin of my prosecutor, the hoarse drone of the judge, and the scratching of the cancellarius’s quill were the last things I was aware of. As the officers pulled me up and turned me around to lead me back to the cell, I blacked out.
* * *
FROM THAT POINT on my memories became blurry; I had the sensation that they encompassed disparate strands of events. My experience branched off, so to speak, as a photon can split when it is both reflected and absorbed by a semipermeable mirror and exists simultaneously in two universes; when two paths open, a shadow brother rushes to its aid, so that both universes can be traveled.
At first I thought I had triggered a sort of enhanced distance mode by activating my depots of nanotects in order to dull my perception of pain and alleviate the emotional burden, but it went beyond that. It was something else. It seemed to me as if a shadow sister were rushing to my side and taking it upon herself to go down the difficult path that had actually been intended for me. As a little girl I had already occasionally had the feeling that I had a dream sister, a consubstantial doppelgänger, but I had never had the courage to tell anyone about it—for fear of being thought mentally ill. Ever since I had delved into the biography of Urban Hargitai, I knew that there were other people who in dreams or under special circumstances had contact with their alternate selves—with shadow beings who live beyond the boundaries of our reality in parallel universes in which events take a different course. I understood what Urban Hargitai had gone through when his shadow brother lost his eyesight in the train crash. I could empathize with what his grandfather André Goldfaden had gone through when his other self was at the mercy of the concentration camps. Even on the safe shore of another universe they were not spared the torments.
* * *
OF COURSE THEY came that night. They were drunk and, in their coarse way, cheerful. I didn’t feel them. I saw their faces close above me, always a different one, goggle-eyed, the gaze turned inward; even that mendacious groom was among them. Grinning, he showed his satisfaction that he now got to take his pleasure after all. I heard their grunting and panting, the shouts of encouragement from the others, who crowded around the table on which I was bound; I smelled their disgusting breath, which struck me in the face, their sweat, their unwashed bodies. But I felt no physical pain, no emotion—nothing.
For t
he examination in search of signa diaboli the nearsighted little potbelly in a blue doublet who had inspected and made a mess of my botanical samples was present. His diagnosis regarding a successful possession by the devil I didn’t hear. But I would often think back on his long, dirty fingernails and on how many women would still have to die in childbed before Semmelweis taught these self-important filthy pigs that a doctor should occasionally wash his hands.
* * *
IT’S ASTONISHING HOW much neglect a person can bear. The farmers strewed their animals’ bedding each night to keep them clean. I, on the other hand, received fresh straw only once a week, and it was already swarming with vermin on the second or third day. I was surprised that no rats had shown up yet.
“I keep them away from you,” I suddenly heard a voice say.
I turned around in fright, for I had heard neither the grind of bolts nor the creak of the door. Above me, in a recess in the wall, sat the biggest rat I had ever seen—a monster of a rat, neither black nor gray or white, but spotted, with a thick coat of russet, umber, and ocher like a cat. Its long bare tail hung down over the beam on which it had made itself comfortable. With its tongue it salivated on its front paw and cleaned its face. Then it looked down at me with its eyes reminiscent of black beads.
“Before you turn away with a shudder or even scream, I tell you that the first impression is deceptive,” it remarked with a reassuring voice.
“You can speak?” I asked in amazement.
“Of course.”
“Are you a modified animal? Where I come from dogs are bred that way. Their intelligence is elevated and they’re given a little bit of linguistic ability.”
“To sic them on people more successfully without getting one’s hands dirty. I know.”
“But rats…”
“I’m not a rat, young woman.”
“But not … a human being?”
“Oh, that’s a difficult question.” The rat raised his snout and bristled his whiskers. “I certainly have a great many human genes in me … No, I’ve chosen this form of existence.”
Was this a dream? I sensed that I was still deep in distance mode due to the shock of the rape, that a state of anosognosia flattened my perception, but that could not be connected to hallucinations.
“Rattus rattus is a downright optimal life form,” the animal went on. “It’s ubiquitous wherever human beings have set foot and left behind their muck. For many millions of years it has been native to the time and therefore inconspicuous; on top of that, it’s robust and resilient—almost impossible to kill.”
“Who are you, then?” I asked.
“Pardon me, I forgot to introduce myself. My friends call me Don Fernando,” replied the rat.
“Don Fernando? And you keep the rats away from me?”
“At least the four-legged ones, and the—”
The rat suddenly fell silent, for at that moment the young man who for several days had been bringing me my food entered my dungeon. He seemed not even to notice the rat on its perch. The fellow was remarkably ugly. His shaggy black hair hung over his eyes, and his mouth was surrounded by a frayed sparse beard. And what a mouth! The upper and lower teeth stuck out almost horizontally, as if when he was a small child a piece of pipe had constantly been shoved down his throat through which food had been poured into him. That deformity magically attracted my eyes. Again and again I caught myself staring at that grotesque set of teeth, over which his lips could not close.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
The fellow emitted a whining wheeze and pointed to his open oral cavity. It was empty; his tongue had apparently been cut out. He was one of those poor creatures to whom the torturers could assign base tasks. They couldn’t divulge anything, couldn’t communicate—mute and stupid as they were.
No, this one here wasn’t stupid. Winter was approaching. It was cold in the dungeon; the straw was damp and smelled putrid. He brought fresh straw and a wool blanket. Gratefully, I stroked his cheek. He grunted and his eyes shone. Who gave attention to such an ugly creature? For hours he sat on the steps outside the door and stared down at me. Might he desire me?
In the meantime, it must have been December. Nicolaus Cusanus was expected in the city. Wasn’t it true that he was staying in Cologne shortly before Christmas, before traveling on to Leuven and Brussels? I wasn’t certain. Why hadn’t I studied the sources more thoroughly when I still had my Scarabeo at my disposal?
Then I had a sudden inspiration. Might I be able to escape my cruel fate with a petition to the cardinal? But how was I to appeal to him? How could I attract his attention?
“Can you get me paper and writing implements?” I asked the poor fellow.
The mute looked at me and shrugged. Again days passed. I repeatedly looked at him questioningly when he brought me the food, emptied my bucket, and swept the cell. Had he even understood me? Probably my request exceeded his capabilities. He had to fear punishment, after all, if he smuggled things in and out. So why should he risk it? But eventually he came and fished paper out of his shirt—a handful of sheets, an inkwell, quills, and a small knife. I was overwhelmed, pressed him to me and gave him a kiss on his disheveled hair. No, he wasn’t stupid, he was lovable—and cunning.
What should I write now? To His Eminence Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa. Your Eminence … But would the letters be sent on to him? Or would my prosecutors file them away sneeringly to increase the burden of proof against me? But what could make my situation any worse? Wouldn’t it be better to risk an attempt, as slim as the chances of success might be, and take the bull by the horns? Reveal myself to be from the future, traveling in the service of the Curia as he was? Simply tell the truth?
East of Cattenom, I wrote, the land is black, deep into Bohemian and Polish regions, as can seen from orbit … This happened in the year of our Lord 2028 …
I gave the letter to the mute, asked him to pass the paper on to someone who could deliver it to the cardinal when he was in the city. He nodded and hid the letter in his shirt.
* * *
MEANWHILE, THE INTERROGATIONS continued. My prosecutors wanted to know which witches had instructed me in magical practices. I didn’t know any names to name, even though they now subjected us—my shadow sister and me—to the torture of the curlo, hoisting up and dropping by the hands, which were bound behind the back. Hoisting up—for the span of a Paternoster, a Salve Regina, and a Miserere—dropping; hoisting up—a Paternoster, a Salve Regina, a Miserere—oh, how horribly long—dropping; hoisting up—ter squassata, three times in a row.
Do you have any ideas, sister? I don’t know any names to name. They think we’re being obdurate. The shoulder pains are growing intolerable. We try to endure them together. Hekking’s little sorcerers help us. I bear the magic invisibly within me for which they’re searching so frantically, but they won’t find it.
Those were my thoughts, the thoughts of a tortured woman accused of witchcraft, stranded five hundred years before her time—and her shadow sister.
No mention of the letters. Had the mute managed to smuggle them out and place them in the hands of a trustworthy person who had access to His Eminence? I was relying on it.
So I wrote: You were the first to have the courage to look infinity, eternity in the eye. You tried to conceive of it, whereas others uttered the word as unthinkingly as if it were only the time until St. Bartholomew’s Day next year.
I wrote: You explained, “Nothing is found in time except an ordered present. The past and the future are the unfolding of the present. The present is the enfolding of all present times, and the present times are its serial unfolding.”
And I wrote: You explained, “Just as in matter many things are possible that will never happen, so, by contrast, everything that will not happen but could happen, if it is in the providence of God, is not possible but actual. But it does not therefore follow that those events actually are.”
And you explained further, “Thus the infinite provide
nce of God encompasses both what will happen and what will not happen but could happen, as well as the contrary, as the genus encompasses contrary differences. And what God’s providence knows, it knows not with the difference of time, because it does not know the future as future nor the past as past, but knows them in an eternal way and thus knows the mutable in an immutable way.”
And I wrote on: You explained, “If someone did not know that the water was flowing and did not see the shore while he was on a ship in the middle of the water, how would he recognize that the ship was moving? And because it always seems to each person, whether he is on the earth, the sun, or another star, that he is at an immovable center, so to speak, and that everything else is moving, if he were on the sun, the earth, the moon, Mars, and so on, he would certainly always set new poles in relation to himself. The structure of the world is therefore as if it had its center everywhere and nowhere its periphery.” You can hardly imagine, Your Eminence, what you anticipated with those ideas, not only philosophically, but also mathematically and cosmologically. Not until more than four hundred years from now will people grasp them and take them up.
In addition, I wrote: You recognized that reality, the actu esse, and virtuality, the posse esse, possibility, are entangled, form a unity.
What could better characterize our situation, shadow sister? Finally I wrote: Beware of Todi.
* * *
THEY WANTED TO break my obstinacy. The Holy Tribunal had decided to forcibly pour into me a brew of wormwood, aloe, and rue, so that the devil would come out in flatus, stercus aut utrumque in corporis excrementa—in winds, feces, and other bodily excretions.
Three days of diarrhea and vomiting. I was exhausted and at the end of my strength. I felt boiling heat in me, while at the same time I was freezing. My nanotects were on highest alert; they swarmed into action. My teeth chattered. The mute brought fresh straw, another blanket, and a warm beer. The bells had often tolled in recent days. Christmas must have been over and the cardinal long since departed for the Netherlands. He had given me no sign. Had my letters not reached him? Perhaps, I thought, at least my warning had reached his ears. If he heeded it, he would escape the epidemic in Todi and continue to do beneficent work for many years.
The Cusanus Game Page 55