“My dear Errata, that’s just the milkman’s dog barking outside.”
“No, it’s them! I know today is the day of deliverance! When I was lying in the forest last night, She appeared to me and said: ‘Tomorrow you will be with me, freed forever from the human madhouse.’ Orea, my beloved, I am coming to You, to You!” and quick as lightning she deftly seized an unsheathed dagger that Sider had placed on his bedside table in case the police arrived. “I cannot fall into their hands again, I swore to that! Get away, you scoundrel!”
She leapt swiftly to the wall and in a flash plunged the steel twice into her heart ... – “Orea, my love, my sister, I see You, You are smiling at me, I am Yours, Your arms open for me, I am Yours in Eternal Radiance, and yours, too, my Sider!”
Those were the last words of sweet, revered Errata, the last words in this most delusive world we call “the waking state,” “reality,” beyond which the light of lights thunders – yet only for those who have at least beheld its glimmer – – –
Sider thought it most sensible if he himself performed the last service for his lover. Having dwelled for a moment, shedding a few tears over the body as it grew cold, he left resolutely for his house. The hour was propitious, the streets still virtually deserted. Having keys both to the main door of the building and to his apartment allowed him easy entry. Although the fact that many objects had been moved gave evidence that the authorities had been there, he found his rooms in more or less the same state as he had left them. Taking some things with him, including a large suitcase and several books, he hurried back to the hotel. Nothing suggested that Errata’s arrival and death had been observed. Her body was terribly withered and light as a feather. He packed it into the suitcase, and that very morning he took her to a place just outside of town which he had already selected many years before in case he would have to deal with any delicate situations ... an easily overlooked section of a rocky valley. Standing atop its modest slopes it was possible to see a kilometre in the distance all around to make sure no one was approaching. In one particular spot, a vertical wall of weathered slate, heavily eroded underneath, rose above the bottom of the small valley. Sider placed his precious cargo beneath it – several prods with his walking stick – and three cubic metres of rock crashed down onto the suitcase. The entire procedure took less than a minute. Sweet Errata was buried deeper than in a normal grave.
Errata lies not in a loathsome cemetery common to members of the vile, rabid humanity that tortured her to death: the former casing of Her eternal Soul dissolves into atoms far from them, in a peaceful, clean nook rarely ever defiled by human foot – but like the soul, the casing, too, is immortal; in the maternal embrace of its immense tumulus-monument, the everlasting, darkly dreaming rocks, it also dreams here darkly, quietly, monotonously, sweetly and for endless time ... Her redeemed, liberated Spirit shines more radiantly than the sun, graciously warming the cliff and Errata’s dust from above; more swiftly than the ether it flies, scintillating and thundering. –
Over the next few days he lingered in town, not visiting his apartment, spending every night in a different hotel, or sleeping out in the open. For the time being he was not pestered by the police. Every evening he wandered through the streets, hoping to see Orea once more.
Despite the grisly incident with Errata, his state of mind somewhat improved. For the first time in three years Sider’s mind entertained the hope that Orea might just be a human being after all. It was a faint hope, frail, nourished more by desire than probability. – Yet it became considerably stronger when on 6 June he read the following in one of the Alpine magazines:
“Finally! The person who, having exploited the superstition prevalent in the environs of Stag’s Head, has been frightening gullible persons by impersonating the ghost of this mountain was apprehended on the 20th of May of this year. She is a lady still in her younger years, beautiful and exceptionally well educated. For a number of years her lodging has been a summerhouse in the hamlet of N. at the foot of Stag’s Head. She has not yet divulged what motivated her to cultivate this surely rather peculiar sport, especially for a lady as distinguished as she. According to the conclusions of experts, she likely displays special abilities of animal magnetism, hypnotism, and telepathy. More light will be cast on this case as the investigation continues.”
The first idea that occurred to the now exhilarated Sider was to set off to the mountains and liberate his love from prison. But because the arrest had taken place seventeen days ago, he concluded that it would do no harm to first find out what had happened in the meanwhile to the incarcerated woman. His fervour cooled even more when he considered the strangling of Old Barbora ... He got hold of as many newspapers as possible from Alpine countries, even writing to their editors, as well as to the courthouse where the lady was being held. His mood considerably brightened.
But a new, significant event raised his hopes enormously. It was not until 9 June that he opened one of the books he’d taken with him from his apartment on that dreadful morning, and tucked away in it he saw – Orea’s portrait with Her handwritten note! ... He was so dumbfounded that it fell from his hand.
“A miracle, or did I in a moment of incomprehensible distraction insert it in the book myself? I could swear now as then that I put it in my billfold ... But what do I know? What does anyone know with absolute certainty? Can you ever be entirely sure if you’re rowing a boat or skating on ice, if you’re not at that exact moment the victim of a mysterious veiling of the senses and the soul? Of a delusion, a vision, somnambulism? If awake or dreaming? There is nothing, nothing you can swear by; we will never know anything with certainty as long as the spirit is the spirit, i.e., Illusion ...”
He had Orea once again! How tremendous! A thousand times a day he took the portrait from its sleeve to check that it had not vanished. A little monkey does not look at the shard of a mirror as often as he at the spectral, intoxicating visage and the magical handwriting. His hope in Orea’s reality transformed into an absolute, almost blissful belief, for he did not want to doubt – he could not permit himself to doubt ... He saw his only salvation herein. He naturally could not destroy his scepticism, though he did manage to narcotize it and subjugate it to his faith. Greatly invigorated and restored to health, he was able to feel in the same way as a long time before: “And if in the most extreme case She were a ghost, that too would be beautiful!” His soul, timorously hesitant, having suffered serious injury, crippled, had yet to rally in full. Otherwise he would have set off at once for Cortona without a second thought. It should be said that what was holding him back more than the dread of making a final decision was the fear of ending up behind bars. Wavering pathologically, he regretted his inability to come to a decision.
•
Though no reports about the fate of the arrested woman reached him, he did read in one magazine this paragraph dated 14 June:
“The tragedy of a mother and daughter. On the ninth of this month around midnight an enormous rock crashed down on an old, dilapidated cottage in Cortona. The rock, which as if by a miracle had hung above the house since beyond human memory, demolished it completely. Its only inhabitant, a ninety-eight-year-old woman commonly known as Barbora’s Háta, was found in the rubble mortally wounded. She gave up the ghost a few hours later after receiving the grace of holy confession and last rites. We note that the mother of the deceased, one-hundred-and-thirty-seven-year-old Barbora, encountered a similarly tragic death in the same dwelling three years ago, having been strangled to death by a villainous robber who thus far has unfortunately eluded arrest.” –
On the morning of the following day, 15 June, he walked boldly into Cliff Street. The sun was shining from an unblemished sky. –
The black house was in ruins. Workers were knocking down the remains of the walls, between which the wife of Master Cobbler Daniel Škopek was crawling around in the rubble on her knees with her two children.
Sider sat down on a nearby lawn for a moment. Then he walked
up to the woman:
“What happened, dear lady?”
She stood up, shielding her eyes with the palm of her hand, and half-slumped down onto the rubble, half-embraced Sider’s knees. “Noble sir, handsome young gentleman, you came to warn us before, the last time, but we didn’t heed your warning! Actually, not so much me, Škopek was the one who wouldn’t listen – the Lord be merciful to his soul,” she started crying, “he’s with the Lord’s truth now.”
“What happened?” he repeated frostily.
“Why the house fell down, didn’t it, noble sir!”
“What day was that?”
“Please hold on a second ... It was – Sunday last –”
“So the ninth. How did it happen?”
“Noble sir, I’ll gladly tell ye everything – don’t gawp, you brats, keep looking! – a few packets of hobnails must still be lying around here somewhere, dear sir, we need every heller.”
He gave her a large banknote. “No need for that,” he pushed away her lips from his hand. “Tell me what happened!”
“On that fateful night no earthly power could get me to fall asleep. Then I remembered that I had laundry up in the attic, and because it was raining and the roof was full of holes I went to fetch it. It was around half eleven. So as I’m walking down the hallway on the upper floor, I see there’s a strip of light beneath the door to the room – for the love of God! I open the door – and noble sir, my legs still buckle beneath me – two beautiful ladies and a handsome young man were sitting there by the table, all of them dressed like scarecrows, in old clothes, like Emperor Bonaparte. And then one of the ladies, she was wearing a blue dress, raised her glass, and there was thick frothy blood in it. She clinked glasses with the other two, who also had blood in their glasses, and said – Mother of Jesus, I almost fainted when I heard that voice of hers:
“ ‘A great night it is tonight, even greater is the Day to come, here’s to all-reconciling Death! Here’s to Eternal Redemption! Here’s to glorious Nemesis!’
“The other lady whooped and clinked her glass, and the gentleman hesitated a bit, and then he clinked his glass too. And they all drank the thick blood.
“I don’t know how I survived it. And then I was suddenly scarpering down the stairs. ‘Škopek!’ I shouted, ‘there’s ghosts upstairs! Put your trousers on quick,’ I told him, ‘and get up there!’
“He grumbled, but in the end he went up. In the meantime I was praying, and my teeth were chattering. He came down and said: ‘Crazy bitch, there’s nothing up there, why did you wake me, you sow!’ and he thrashed me with his knee strap, but I didn’t even feel it, such was the horror still rattling me. As soon as he’d finished beating me he lay back down and fell asleep, snoring. I dropped to my knees and started to pray. Then the tower struck midnight and all of a sudden – it was like an enormous stone fist struck the roof ... – and our ceiling caved in, and one of the beams fell on that heathen – the Lord God forgive me – right on his head. His brain squirted out,” she started weeping. “He was a social democrat and a fool, but may the Lord grant him eternal glory!”
“How could the roof have collapsed?”
“That I don’t know, gracious sir. The master builder, he’s over there, go ask him if it be to your liking, said he doesn’t understand it, said the beams were in fine shape, that it looks just like a rock had fallen on the roof. Go ask him yourself, kind sir!”
“There’s no need any longer ... Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Well, only that I came to no injury, blessed be the Lord, my children neither. But, dear, noble sir, how shall a widow such as I provide for four hungry mouths? Oh dear God –”
Sider gave her a fistful of banknotes of sufficient value to allow her and her children to live without care for several years, and then he quickly departed.
She caught up with him and, falling to her knees, clasped his waist:
“Dear sir, what have you, for the sake of Christ, given me! Why, it’s an entire fortune.”
“Forgive me it’s so little. I am the one who demolished the house.”
“Most honourable sir – what – aaah! – You do resemble that gentleman who drank the blood – you’re like two peas in a pod you are – aaah ... take your money –”
“What good is it to me, ha ha ha ha!” he laughed and hurried away. “Madman, cretin!” the yelling of the boys hounded him. –
“Is She human? ... But what is a human? Ha ha ha! Is She a ghost? ... Am I not a ghost? Ha ha ha! I do not know anything about anything. Everything human falls; I am falling; what a joy it is to fall; the human’s fall is God’s liberation ... To the Alps! ... But I feel so enervated right now, so savagely, so helplessly weak – thrice weak! ... My demise is imminent, that much is certain ... Oh heavens above or Will of mine, give me the strength not to end up in a dunghill, but in Radiance! ... Sleep ... ; or a bullet to the head right away? How repulsive the will! ...”
He found himself wandering the streets around midnight. He had no idea how he came to be standing in Cliff Street. “It’s no use!” he laughed lethargically. “Ah, ah, the light of the full moon at solstice is completely yellow, sickly, and something is whispering to me ... Let’s go there, there – there we will sleep, there the pistol, there the bullet ...”
He walked into the rubble. He wound his way through piles of stones and bricks. Among them, he noticed something blue, quivering, the appearance of a human body. He came nearer, cold as death. It was a woman, lying on her side, her face covered with her palms and a kerchief.
“It’s Her,” he said to himself, “of course, who else? Real or a phantom? Do I have the portrait?” he reached into his pocket, and at once withdrew his hand. “Ridiculous questions, to hell with it all! She is, therefore She is not, She is not, therefore She is! Ah!”
He lay down next to Her and looked at Her. He was in a strange state of mind, not afraid and yet lacking the courage to address Her ... “What is it that the moon keeps whispering to me? It’s something important but I still don’t understand ... Aaah – what was that? It felt as though my entire soul had turned 360 degrees ... But how light, free, brave I feel –”
He reached out swiftly to tear the kerchief from the woman’s face. He was struck by such a strong jolt of electricity he remained momentarily transfixed.
“Orea,” he said softly after a while.
Silence.
“Say something to me at last!”
Silence.
“I love You, I’m unhappy, help me!”
Silence. But Her shoulders twitched ever more vigorously.
“Do You not hear me, my most beloved?”
– – “I am not allowed to speak,” She said after a moment in a whisper as hollow as a puff of wind.
“And yet You’ve spoken.”
“I should not have – –”
“What am I to do? Have mercy!”
A moment of silence. “Liberate me ...” thundered after a longer while.
“Free me first ... I’m weak and sickly. I do not have the courage – for Cortona.”
“You must!”
“I cannot.”
Feverishly She shook, and then all of a sudden –
“Very well then, I shall give you your wish! I will be punished severely for it, as will you. Nothing in eternity has more deplorable consequences than making things easier for oneself: whoever makes things easier, makes things worse, whoever helps, harms. We, however, can bear it. So – here is my kiss!”
She threw off the kerchief. And he beheld Her terribly beautiful, beautifully terrible face, whiter and more lustrous than the moon above. Her arms embraced him – “My eternal Sider” – and Her lips touched his. A horrible moment, he felt as though someone were ripping his soul from his body, like pulling a tooth. Then the blackness of terror burst into the radiant flames of unbounded delight ... he saw Her recoil and Her snow-white hands shield Her face from his – but once again and more vehemently She lunged into his embr
ace. Everything then became immersed in darkness.
When Sider regained consciousness the east was quietly, spectrally turning white, the moon turning vitreous. He suddenly felt himself to be a completely different person than he had ever been before: steadfast and strong, heroic, noble. He rose. Only then did he see the woman lying a step away.
She was wearing a blue dress, its appearance indicating a filthy whore. Bared breasts, knees uncovered, an ordinary face. Snoring appallingly, the stench of liquor issuing from her gaping mouth reached all the way to his nostrils ...
“Ha ha! So this apish world we inhabit behaves consistently! Of no consequence, entirely insignificant. Nothing that humans know has anything to do with the depth of Primordial Existence. Humankind only floats on a surface of mud; it is itself mud. Out from the mud! ... Oh, how everything, everything that a moment ago was crushing me seems so ridiculously light now! Thanks to You, Orea! Soon I will be Yours, holy goddess, soon I will be – God! ... My Orea, how trivial the question if You are human or phantom! Whether one or the other, for me both now are one and the same! – I’m coming to You – to Eternity!” –
He walked directly to the railway station, bright and powerful like the rising sun.
6
He arrived in Cortona on the afternoon of 17 June.
The clean, unblemished sky hung above him radiantly like an immense blue sun in which our own ostensible sun drowns like the paltry human being in God. The awful ranks of the mountains of Cortona – fossils of the primeval Melody thundering: “Do what you can, worm, and don’t worry about the rest, you will be squashed no matter what, just a slightly bigger germ you are! Though this you fail to understand.”
That is how they spoke to him, and he, a wretched human, did understand a little: at least he understood that he did not understand them – yet under all circumstances this is what is most important down here. Is it good to understand anything? Is it even possible? ... For the human, understanding means madness and death. And Sider no longer wished to understand, and with his soul ablaze he strode into his dear, ghastly little town.
Glorious Nemesis Page 7