Odoro told Netty his dream and she listened to her husband's account to the very end, at first patiently, then with increasing intensity.
“Do you understand, Netty? According to Lucifer's new telling, we didn't simply come after the fall of the brightest angel in Creation. That means we aren't the synthesis of a temporal Professor begun and developed independently from its sin, rather we are its consequence. We are made of the same substance, cast to sidereal distances by an unthinkable explosion. We have good parts which come from God and evil parts from the Opponent's sin. Yet a non-static soul, though liable to variations related to our behaviour: some white, some black and a lot of iridescent shades of grey. In the end, the dark substance will come to devastation and the bad ones, the real ones, will be destroyed.”
At the end of the story, Netty was so worried about her husband's mental health that she convinced Odoro to visit a neuropsychiatrist. But nothing came of it and Mr Swollenman (genuine swelling man) began taking notes on what he had seen in his dream. At the same time he called the detective agency of Mr Steve Handjob and his wife Comforter, one of the most renowned in couples' betrayals. Odoro confided his worries about his wife's private life to the two investigators (conveniently omitting the fact that his doubts had started up following Lucifer's revelations) and begged them to follow his wife's movements, particularly her holidays at Ladoga Lake, because she was probably having a faithless relationship there.
Mr Handjob and his better half (you can imagine the unmentionable puns coined by critics of those two fine detectives for Mr Handjob's better half) left without delay for the well-known Russian holiday spot and it wasn't difficult for them to find evidence proving Netty's infidelity. Nevertheless they very quickly learnt that it wasn't simply a matter of impure sex, but instead a very close friendship between a man and a woman, with an exchange of organic matter as well (simple details, these). He was a surfing teacher, a man ten years younger than her, ten years younger than Odoro. The two Handjobs, returning from their detective trip, promptly told Professor Swollenman (explicit swelling man) what news they had gathered. And the eminent philologist, although a cultured man, immediately realized that between himself and the opponent in love there was a difference of twenty years, all of them in favor of the latter.
CHAPTER 7
In spite of the anxiety that was gripping him tight and an insane doubt about his wife's behaviour, Professor Swollenman (indomitable swelling man) began writing the novel which whould have announced to all the light bearing new telling. And as his wife about to leave for Ladoga Lake, he requested the two Handjob detectives follow Netty during her holiday, and take as many pictures as possible as evidence in eventual divorce proceedings.
It was after his wife's departure that Odoro dreamt of Gabriel and Lucifer again. And in dreamlike view, as the archangel ticked his right index finger like a metronome, the Opponent thus said: “I can't help but feel satisfied in regard to your decision to start writing the new telling, Mr Swollenman, such that I thought about this opportunity to tell you the facts exactly as they all really happened, so as to make the story real too, as well as new. Therefore I am pleased to inform you that you'll have the honour of being the first to know the truth, on the condition that you carry the burden of it too.
I'll begin by telling you the characters of this story aren't two, but three. Follow along please. A male and a female with an eternal promise for love and fidelity (I must admit you humans have invented this bizarre fidelity story) are living happily on a heavenly piece of land, reflected in the lake's crystal clear water, with its irregular outline between the liquid expanse and the sky (it almost seems to be the end of the story). On the shores of this lake lives another man, much younger than the other and a few years younger than the woman. For description's sake, we'll call the second man opponent (in love). It so happens the woman, going to the lake to bathe, meets the opponent and these meetings go on and on without her husband knowing. She is sexually attracted to the opponent, and even though she understands he is clean outside but sinister inside and that love between this repugnant character and herself is actually a forbidden fruit, she ends up caught in his trap. Her husband, finally, discovers the affair, and nabbing these infidel forerunners in an unequivocally blameworthy pose, for some incomprehensible reason, instead of simply going away and leaving those two adulterous characters to their sad fate, he kills the opponent in love and eats his heart. They are thrown out of that heavenly land and start a life of hardship trying, but with no firm belief, to get out of that situation as embarrassing as it is inexplicable...
Mr Swollenman, you are a literary man and you certainly aren't new to some analogies in the story I've just told you with what you are experiencing yourself. Nevertheless I didn't make up anything to obtain a story similar to yours at present. It's all real and has happened every day, since the mists of time. I wouldn't want you to make that woman's husband's same mistake, because it would be unseemly for you and for myself to lose a few pieces which might prove fundamental to redemption. Then tell me: if an awkward outcome should emerge during these Handjob spouses' investigation, what would be more uncomfortable than the real truth?
A - the social and cultural frenzy which sees a cuckold man as the antithesis of power and masculinity?
B - the natural fundamentalist concept, which considers our genes being placed in a yet empty goblet, like a basic and theological act (if you prefer, purposeful) of Mankind's final fate (that of the male)?
I believe, Mr Swollenman, yours isn't a matter of transferred property. The culture of origin got us used to the shamelessness of possessive adjectives: my husband, my wife, my woman, my man... We immodestly subject a heavenly (and a bit devilish) soul to our volition, while never considering that this subjected heavenly (and a bit devilish) soul does the same with us. This doesn't seem to be the point... and don't tell me that while you are screwing you think of your genes (this feature is peculiar only to men of science)...
Rather, as you are a literary man, have you ever thought of the growing intimacy in a couple relationsip, where two individuals, at first completely separate, inevitably end up belonging to one another, with no earthly property ties, rather kept together almost indissolubly by threads as invisible as immaterial? This kind of possession cannot be described using an adjective. It's a belonging, Mr Swollenman, a bond beyond any possible rational control. Because of these facts, I am convinced that for you a more bothersome reason above all the others exists... That is the doubt the insect, namely your opponent in love, has ended deep in your Net (one's Net, anyway).”
“Has ended up!” intervened Odoro, forcing entry into Lucifer's loquacious exposition. And the latter: “And so be it up... You are the literary man, Mr Swollenman... Don't get upset, please. My only wish is that you don't get in trouble for an annoying, yet insignificant matter. Remember we are made of the same substance and I wouldn't like it to dissolve because of a senseless choice... I care about what's good for you, yes, but most of all I don't want my soul to dissolve, and the consequent failure of my redemption, which is actually bound to yours. Don't be angry, Mr Swollenman... I know Mankind's fallacious behaviour perfectly well. Well... I cannot surely say I read more than the devil, but I know many things...”
Odoro woke up with a jump while the phone was ringing, and it took him a few seconds to realize it had all been a dream. After which he lifted the receiver and heard Mr Steve Hanjob's voice who updated him about the most recent events and arranged to meet and hand him what he had gathered.
CHAPTER 8
At first Mrs Handjob's request left him astonished. But he soon guessed that if Comforter had asked him to take off his underpants and trousers, there must be a good reason. And furthermore in front of her husband Steve. Odoro uncovered the lower part of his body and the Handjobs could see the swollen swelling that had earned the Professor status as a myth (although he was more upright than the national average). Handjob looked at his better half, who, af
ter nodding (as if to say: I knew it), commented: “We expected to find something extraordinary between your thighs, Professor Swollenman. Nevertheless you've managed to impress us anyway, to the point that if my husband and I hadn't made an extramarital celibacy and single status agreement, now we would be captured in your net. You must be wondering about the reason for all this, and I'll satisfy your curiosity at once, hoping to fulfill your hunger for knowledge. We took more than one picture of your opponent in love while naked, and in his maximum erection he didn't exceed this size.”
While talking, Comforter showed Odoro a picture of a small penis captured between his wife's full lips. To one side of the, free shaft, free from this lip trap, Handjob (Steve's better half) had written opponent with a felt-tip pen, to avoid any misunderstanding. But as the shaft was very small, the n and the t of the word had ended up in Netty's jaws.
“As you yourself can notice, this phallus' length is less than ten centimetres at its maximum erection. According to our extreme theory, this size makes us think your wife, at first fascinated by that young athlete's beauty and then seduced by his swelling childish smallness, arousing her protective instincts, has been overwhelmed, unable to resist the temptation to know such a small flesh specimen. Small for Netty, obviously, being used to another such different size. It's a kind of Dantesque retaliation (I'm saying this because you are a literary man). Yet, to find comfort in the justness of our theory, we had to see the size of your penis, Professor Swollenman... and, let me tell you, just witnessing it makes one happy to be alive.”
The following day, Odoro decided to join his wife by Ladoga Lake, to know personally that insect which didn't scorn ending up in his Net.
CHAPTER 9
… Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honor clad
In naked majesty seemed lords of all...
… Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame...
… Aside the Devil turned
For envy; yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plained:
"Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two,
Imparadised in one another's arms,
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell arm thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire..."
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV
Odoro arrived in St. Petersburg unberknownst to anyone (males or female), and in a rented car went to Ladoga, where Netty and her lover were consuming their impure love. More than once he had conjectured the arachnid hidden between his wife's thighs eagerly swallowing that insect which had come forward cockily, shredding it into a million pieces. Each time that small eager specimen exited the Net curved and humiliated, totally emptied of the fatuous arrogance it had been filled with.
When Odoro reached the lake shores, among the other people lying in the sun, he noticed two creatures of nobler shape than the others, stark naked, with their mysterious parts left visible, there not being any guilty shame in it. They looked superior. Professor Swollenman, envious, turned his gaze elsewhere, but with jealous, wanton and evil eyes, he once again gave the two creatures a nasty look.
“Awful sight, tormenting sight!” he moaned, “In Heaven, lying in each other's arms, and the lake all the happier because of them, they'll fully enjoy all of it, while at the bottom of this hell of mine there's neither joy nor love for me.”
They were beautiful Netty and her athlete, so free to love each other in this uncontaminated place, where nobody had ever met them.
Odoro departed, humiliated upon witnessing these things. And while he was thinking about how to compensate for his grievance, he recalled a story the students in his course used to tell, spicing it up with a bit of wholesome carnal desire: it regarded a mènage à trois, where two men in love with the same woman met and fell in love each other, giving rise to sexual vicissitudes worthy of the greatest tightrope walkers and jugglers, as well as conjurers. Professor Swollenman (swollen bundle man) concentrated on that scholastic story, seeking geometric inspiration to solve this lake triangle.
CHAPTER 10
A - going away leaving the two lovers to their fate
B - catching them redhanded and demanding reparation for the damage
C - taking the two adulterers by surprise and killing them
Among these three options, there landed in Professor Swollenman's lap (insatiable swelling man) yet another one, a fourth (D), which won him over. According to the pictures Mrs Comforter Handjob had showed Odoro, it was possible to deduce unequivocally that the opponent in love's anus hadn't only given up to cathartic intestinal pushes, but also to not always easy to evade foris portas (external) claims. Confident of this truth, Swollenman, without his wife's knowing and with targeted ambushes worthy of the Handjob spouses most advanced teachings, finally managed to violate the athlete's impure orefice, and this happened in May, after an ice-cold bath in the Ladoga (whose temperature is 3 °C in that period). Perhaps it was for this reason that Odoro seemed to feel a smooth but very cold annulet, when entering by candlelight the opponent in love's meanders. And that was only the first among a series of meetings and cognitive exchanges, where the two new lovers learnt very quickly that it isn't anatomy which distinguishes beyond the shadow of a doubt the female anus from that of the male, but rather all that surrounds it.
Lady Netty, from whose arachnid nothing could escape, realized at once that something had happened to her lover (it seemed her athlete's sphincter was more yielding than usual lately), and one day, on the beach, she caught her husband (whose presence at Ladoga was unsuspected) and her boyfriend in each other's arms, with their mysterious parts left visible, there being no guilty shame in it.
“Awful sight, tormenting sight!” she moaned, “They'll enjoy satisfactory delight upon delight and there will be neither joy nor love for me.”
Having said so, she hurled herself at those naked bodies, reclaiming them both with violent assertion. And just when the waters looked calmer, allowing the three of them to regain control of that unpleasant situation, the athlete tripped over a rock and in falling broke his neck (actually it was an epistropheus dens injury, the second cervical vertebra, which breaking let the atlas, the first cervical vertebra, cut decidedly the marrow, so as to cause a nearly instant death).
Netty and Odoro saw their end. Infact who would believe in such a fatal accident? By that time, easy prey to wrong doing and with no possibility of escape, if not one which would estrange them from human justice, they threw the athlete's corpse into the water, weighing it down with a few stones picked up here and there. Then they continued towards their hotel, had a bath and left Ladoga never to return again. Having arrived back at Nice Little House, following their travels deepin the fear of being caught, they realized how much harm they had caused to the athlete, even though what had happened might be dismissed superficially as simply an unfortunate accident. Nevertheless, they thought, the surfing teacher himself had sown discord between them, by fingering those delicate creases of a couple which wouldn't have been called unhappy by any means. They decided to expiate their sin in suffering, which would accompany them all their life, never leaving them.
Odoro finished his hard work. His book was awarded prizes, because the author had succeeded, as never before, in rendering light and clear a topic so full of dark aspects. The work entitled The New Telling by Odoro Swollenman, or We are the Devil, was translated into many languages and sold all over the world.
Today its lightness and clarity have no rivals.
SATANIC APPENDIX
Above all my thanks go to the Author and the Publisher for giving me this space, allowing me to elucidate past events and clarify those facts found in the story. A work from which emerges, finally and without a doubt, the truth about the Origin, just as the tip of an iceberg is free to wander f
rom one extreme to the other without melting.
Now you have learned how Evil was able to come from God, wanted by me, God's own good creature, with the possibility to choose (an option also desired by the Father himself) between Good and its contrary. All you humans come from me, men and women. From the explosion that tore my body, compressed like a proton by the guilt of sin, reducing it to billions and billions of unique scraps: the first bricks in the Universe around you.
Your DNA is mine. We share the same fate. Creation is our only opportunity for redemption.
However, now it all comes down to you. You, like me, have been given the responsability of free will, bearer of anxiety and misfortune.
Oh! How I long for that time when I was told things and I believed them. No doubts, no decisions to make, no sense of guilt. When you humans have to choose, know how much I understand your task! Think of me, me who's not only inside of you, but also with you!
Let's get to Mr Swollenman's New Telling then, because I wish to point out something which might be useful for whomever finds himself in this same condition someday, crushed under the weight of choice. I want to stress how the knowledge of sin is fundamentally related to every character's behaviour in order to understand events.
Let's start by analyzing the athlete's position, whom we shall call the opponent (Mr Swollenman's opponent of course, and we'll call him Adam). What is this man's fault, being in love with Mrs Swollenman (whom we shall call Eve) and having fallen because of this love, the highest amongst feelings, into the arachnid's net? Actually the opponent, you'll say, as soon as realized he was falling in love, should have taken a step backward, even allowing Eve Swollenman to doubt whether or not she was desired. Instead, overwhelmed by his senses, he became her accomplice in adultery, robbing her right from her love and killing her marital relationship by all effects. Surely he would have been able to physically kill for that woman who didn't really belong to him, but whom he felt was his. The opponent, acting thus, contradicted God's words concerning marriage and the right to life, and also about mankind's freedom to fulfill himself through tangible goods:
The Soul Quantum Theory, or We are the Devil Page 2