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Charles the Hideous

A TALE OF MY KINGDOM

(Apocryphal)

Although the square kilometer as a unit of measure has not been invented yet, my kingdom stretches over 450 square kilometers. But no one knows that. Not even Grossman. I never desired to have a large kingdom. The size of a kingdom contributes nothing to the greatness of its king. On the contrary. Large empires gather all sorts of riffraff, and the emperor has all the shortcomings of his subjects. After all, I did not inherit my kingdom. I created it myself, with my bare hands and a lot of hard work. I spent all my savings. With the help of Grossman my majordomo, I even made my own throne from well-seasoned beech. Into the back of the throne, from behind, we nailed spikes in the shape of a cross, and then we hung the throne with thick rope from the ceiling like a swing. Nothing was left to chance, everything roils with symbolism. When I sit on the throne, the points of the nails drive into my back and I thus crucify myself; the pain does not allow me to relax. I think of the sufferings of our Savior and that forces me to be just and to be forgiving. And the fact that the throne swings indicates the inconstancy of Fortuna, of human life in general. You see, I began as a normal village boy. No one knows who my father was. Perhaps not even who my mother was. This will be interpreted in three hundred and fifty years by Sigmund Freud, when he arrives in the world of the living: the conditions were right so that I never overcome my Oedipus complex, of which Grossman does not even dream. He thinks that Freud is a figment of my imagination. He does not realize that he himself, the majordomo, is a product of an imagination so powerful that he is tangible. It does not matter, if he knew, the flatterer he is, he would immediately come running, tuck his tail and cry out: “Sire, what an important prophesy! What a great prophesy!” Imagine what he would do if I were to tell him something about quarks and quantum theory! Never mind. I overcame my Oedipus complex with ease, possibly because I did not know at the time that it existed. I am a simple man and I figured like this: I have no father, I will be no one’s father. End of story. Then I met Grossman. He had been studying theology at the University of Uppsala, and they had just thrown him out. Rumor has it, because of a deal with the devil. The deal was this: the devil gives Grossman a doctoral degree, Grossman gives his soul to the devil. A fair deal, but it was against the rules of the time. Since we did not have any income back then, we only had intentions, we found jobs at “The Four Antlers” tavern. We washed dishes, kept the fire burning, carried water and cooked oxen in pepper and dill. Grossman had the habit of killing time by asking me theological riddles. For example, how many angels can stand on the head of a pin? Or, habet mulier animam? He would ask in the middle of the rush, wrapped, as if in hell, by an opaque cloud of sulfur steam from the ox horns. Then the owner would interrupt our dispute with a flourish of curses, and theology would have to wait for the nobles to stuff themselves. And stuff themselves they did. I can still hear them slurping their soup, smacking their lips, the chomping of bones, it all resounds through the ages like an echo. I almost forgot, at the time my name was Ladislav, but I did not pay much attention to that. If someone were to accidentally call me, let’s say, Ivan, then I would be Ivan. Ivan, Ladislav, Grossman, what is the difference? At that time, almost none. That is the very reason I became a king. So that I could rise above the average. But I remained average anyway. That is the conditio humana. Anyway, once the nobles had gorged themselves, I would answer Grossman in a whisper: “She doesn’t have one, a woman has no soul. I am sure of it. Women have only a cunt. The cunt is the center, the sun of their planetary system around which, and because of which, all the other organs move and function. And since the vagina is nothing, an ordinary hole, the lack of anything, emptiness, not only does a woman not have a soul – she doesn’t even exist.” “You’re wrong,” Grossman shouted to me from the cloud of his reeking soul. Poor Grossman. He knew Greek and Latin well, but he knew nothing about women. Just like his languages, he was dead. I want to say: hardly anyone knew him, it was hard to communicate with him, but he was still quite useful. Grossman taught me to write. The first use I had of Grossman. I was not interested in the skill of making slanted-thin and straight-thick lines, but in making this book, I was indeed interested. Because of this book I clumsily wrote out my first letters with my gnarled hands. Not to mention the lack of writing materials. This will be well known by even the lowest village tutor in the 19th century. As a sign of gratitude, when I became King I raised a nice mausoleum for Grossman and had the stone engraved GROSSMAN, which soothes his vanity no end. Sometimes he closes himself up in it and practices being dead. He’s careful, he leaves nothing to chance. I do not like such people. Perhaps I will bury someone else there, just to spite him. Now you have some facts which are more significant than the abovementioned about the lack of writing materials. Some future scribbler can draw a few conclusions from this and get his doctorate. First: in this time, a lot of attention is paid to tombs because of the obsession with death, and the nobles build their eternal homes while they are still alive. Second: the nobles are unusually vain, morbid, and they tend to tinker with the details. And there you have it, I also leave nothing to chance and I should not be surprised if they bury me in a potter’s field.

At this moment, interest in my personal history practically does not exist. Only here and there do a few mentions of me sprout up. But those are just Grossman’s memories; he has more than he needs. This time and place, among other things, is flooded with memories. In spite of everything, I am writing my history because only one who has no history has the right to write it. Everyone else is biased. In the same way – he thinks best who thinks not at all. Every thought is evil. Father Albert, my confessor, told me that, and I learned it by heart. Sometimes I do not think anything for a few days. I swing on my throne, dully staring at the deer antlers on the wall, and my courtiers pass by on their tiptoes and the rumor spreads: the king is thinking. It is simply hard to believe the extent to which people will be ass-kissers. When I, for example, stabilized my power, touched by one of Grossman’s memories of the years spent in the kitchen, I bequeathed the title of baron to all my kitchen boys, all thirty-five of them. And so the dishwashers became great noblemen. All day long they sit in the taverns, gorging themselves, drinking, pinching the waitresses. Just like in that drawing by Gottfried of Mainz, Wheel of Fortune. However, they have become too decadent. The power has gone to their heads. I hear they are raising a conspiracy to overthrow me. They figure: if he, that is I, can become king without any title whatsoever, why shouldn’t we, the noblemen? But Grossman is preparing our revenge. I am going to send them all back to the kitchen. I will have several of them shot, if gunpowder has reached Europe by then. If not, I will have their heads chopped off. Still, shooting would be more effective as a novelty. It is not a bad idea once in a while to burn a witch or two at the stake, or to hold a public execution. The people love to kill but they do not have the legal right to do so, so a reasonable king has to order an execution now and then, just to allow for some relief and to preserve law and order. Otherwise, I do not believe in witches, though Grossman does. If you believe in anything other than God you become a heretic. But I am tolerant toward heretics as well. This is my doctrine: if all men are sinful, no one knows God, and therefore all theologies are heretical. Short and simple. And that’s why my kingdom is a sanctuary for heretics. They come under my auspices from all over. I am practically the forerunner of democracy. Not long ago, just in from Paris from where they had fled persecution, some Bicyclists arrived. Or something like that. I entertained their leader, Joseph Ferrarius and he showed me a clay tablet, a relic of theirs and a translation of it which I offer here in Grossman’s version of it:*

THE BOOK OF JAVAN THE SON OF NAHOR

The words of Javan, the son of Nahor, to those yet unborn.

Coming from the east to the land of the Seran, I settled with my brethren, sons and flocks; and our wealth multiplied and we dwelled in harmony with the other tribes.

And behold, builders came from elsewhere, master masons; and they lit a great fire and began to bake bricks of clay, saying: Come, let us build a tower reaching into the sky. We shall take refuge in it from the beasts of the field and winds and floods. And above us shall… (text missing)… into the ages.

And in the sand did they draw a rather large tower. And the tower was broad at the base and a stairway wound about it like a snake, and its top did disappear in the clouds. And on the tower were gardens and streams and other beauties of the earth.

And in the seventh year of building, I slept and a dream I did dream: behold, a wheel was on the ground… (text missing)… in form and with the device the wheels were like… and both were equal and in form with the device it seemed that one was behind the other.

And whence the spirit did go, there went the wheels and when the spirit did fly so did they also rise, because the spirit was on wheels.

And behold, a terrible light did blind me and I heard a voice saying unto me: “Javan, open your eyes and behold the tower that you also are building.” And I opened my eyes and beheld the tower as it rose into the heavens, and its walls were as of glass and deep inside it could I see.

And at the bottom of the tower I saw a multitude kneeling before false priests and each of them was confessing his sufferings to a priest and telling him the desires and thoughts of his heart.

And the priests said: Be not afraid. We… (text missing)… when you confess the thoughts of your hearts to us, we will make you happy and you will live long.

And behold, those who desired to sin, they gathered together on one floor and did sin together, male with male and female with female; and a stench rose into the heavens and it was a torture to behold.

And those who wanted to go to war and to do battle, the priests did send them to the floor above. And that floor was barren and without grass, and here did they go to war and kill one another, and blood flowed up to their knees. And from above did the priests watch the battle and laugh.

And the drunkards did lie in a luscious garden and drink wine, and they spoke blasphemous words that were a torture to hear.

And behold, the peaceful and hardworking people at the very bottom of the tower, digging and plowing, and gathering the fruits of the field, they took them to the priests. But unruly guards did come out bearing whips and began beating all who raised their voice. And they cried: Is this why we have raised the tower, for you to tear it down?

And deeper, in the center of the tower, I beheld horrible sights such as my eyes never saw even in dreams. Sons murdered their fathers and lay with their mothers; and women were riding men. And I saw many more awful things which I know not how to describe.

And again I was blinded by a light and the tower disappeared and I heard a voice commanding me: Javan, repent. Take your brethren and your sons and flee to the north.

But before you set off, make a tablet of clay and on it write an account of what you have seen and heard. And at the bottom of the tablet, press in this seal of our secret testament.

And before my eyes appeared a seal which looked like those wheels of fire and between them the letter Daleth of fire as well.

And then the voice said to me: You should know, this tower will I destroy and it will be raised again and again I will tear it down, and then all be will one and all.

And behold, I was immediately awake, and in my hand was a tablet into which I pressed the seal of our secret testament, as I was told, two wheels of fire and the letter Daleth of fire.

Ferrarius told me all kinds of things. Not only how the first tower of Babylon was destroyed but also how another would also be built. He showed me their relic, a cart made in the image of Ezekiel’s vision with wheels one behind the other. With it, he said, one can reach the heavens. I knew, of course, that this was just an allegory but, just for fun, I ordered Grossman to ride down the slope next to the court on it. He almost broke his neck. Since then he cannot stand the Two-Wheelers and can hardly wait for them to leave. Because of that, I ordered him to write a history of their sufferings in Paris. The hypocrite. He thinks that I don’t know that he is secretly scribbling in my margins with invisible ink. If I strain my ears, I can hear him scribbling, scratching on the surface of history, leaving behind his stains, driven by the mindless desire not to evaporate from the world’s memory. But, now back to the executions. To prove my lack of bias, I even sent my wife, Queen Margot, to the gallows. She was trying to usurp the throne with the aid of her lover, Baron von Kurtiz. I do not know what is wrong with these idiots, and their number is countless, what drives them to dream of ruling and of thrones? Do they think I saved every penny for twenty years just to rule? No, my intention is to bring a metaphysical concept into reality. Margot was not a bad wife, but she could not resist the handsome von Kurtiz. Radbertus of Odense, in a book he will soon write, says that beauty is the weapon of the Devil. And then, there is always female vanity. So, once I went into the coal room by surprise – and there was Margot in front of a mirror. The devil was taking her from behind, and she was staring transfixed by the reflection of the infernal buttocks. I knew this would not end well. In spite of everything, I did not want to act rashly. I thought, it’s a passing madness. A couple of times I caught her in the garden, making out with the Baron, but I pretended to be dreaming. Ah, but then I had had enough and I awoke and called in my servants. The next day, I prepared a real show for the masses. Exciting and educational all at once. So that people would know what greed and beauty lead to. But this was a small comfort for my ugliness. This is how I look, for the sake of my offspring I will describe myself: short of build, crooked back, crooked legs, crooked arms; dressed in a shapeless tunic of laced leopard skin. On my forehead I have a rather large growth. My right eye is small, sunk deeply in its socket; the left eye is covered with a cataract. But such a depiction will never reach my offspring. Gottfried of Mainz did a rather flattering painting of me, fearing my royal anger, and I closed one eye in it, tricked by my own vanity, and accepted the painting as it was, a false rendition of myself, a fake…

As the Preacher said long ago: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Taking the throne of a kingdom that I bought from a bankrupt count, I walled up all the doors on the monastery of St. Panfucius, in order to preserve the purity of the faith, and I changed the name of the monastery just to spite the Pope, that seller of indulgences. There he is in Rome lounging about in silks and velvets, instead of roaming the earth barefoot and looking for someone to crucify him. He sends the Jesuits to re-convert me to his mercantile religion. But no. I have switched to the Orthodox Church. The monastery is now called St. Gregory Palama. Underneath it I built a twisting labyrinth with its entrance on the square in front of the cathedral, and its exit in the courtyard of the monastery. Those aspiring to monastic dignity must pass through the labyrinth. The unworthy get lost and remain in one of its corners forever. Once, accompanying Grossman to communion, I saw some grinning skeletons in the torchlight and I thought to myself: If it weren’t for those skulls, those little bones, man would be absolutely nothing. Ouk on, as my majordomo would say. Stop! Nihilism! Heresy. Those who are indeed led by the Holy Spirit, glory be to God, arrive safe and sound. In this way, a high degree of spirituality is achieved. Dry bread and a little water, farewell to space and time. My monks see forward and backward. They dream the dreams that will be had by future generations; they know the intentions of my enemies. They speak with angels. They walk on water. Occasionally I take one of the monks out to walk on the lake, for the good of the people and for the sake of obedience. On the high holy days, the Hegumen of the monastery rises a hundred or so cubits, so that I don’t say “meters” as an anachronism, he rises, as I was saying, above the bell tower of the church and holds the High Liturgy. On the other hand, I built a huge tavern for the sinners, thieves and perverts where they can enjoy their vices to their hearts’ content, and not upset the decent Christian folk. I separated good and evil and I swing in the middle on my throne-Golgotha. I am highly depraved. I descend into the very depths of sin in order to achieve the highest degree of holiness. That is the fabric of the world: Evil foes besiege the borders of my kingdom, demons besiege the soul of the king. Beautifully said. I defend my subjects from their enemies, both earthly and heavenly. I take all temptations upon myself. The monks have no time for that. Almost completely beyond, blind to this world, with a thin membrane that covers their earthly eyes and with white lilies in their hands – as if in a picture that Nemanja will one day paint – they are undermining time and space so that, when the time is right, they can raise my kingdom into Heaven. In order to pluck my empire from the claws of history, from the pit of sin. For this very reason, I never wanted to expand my borders. To make it easier for the kingdom. Who could possibly raise such a colossus as the Roman Empire into the heavens when, because of its bulkiness, it sank into hell, and is still sinking ever deeper? A large country, a multitude of people – there is nothing good in that. As time passes, there will be more and more people. But people are like golden coins. The more of them there are, the less they are worth. People as tokens. Counterfeit persons without ontological backing. They do not even know what ontology is. They think that God is hidden in the attic of my palace. Fools who spit upon the past. There you have it, one more reason to prevent the tyranny of the yet unborn common masses, to write their history ahead of time, to determine it for them. That is my natural right. Because, if I would just try, though I have no such intention, I could live another mere three hundred and fifty years, if I would just drink less and avoid wild game on the dining table. But none of those people, no matter how hard they try, will be able to return to the past, my past where I rule supremely with the aid of faithful Grossman, not out of a craving for power, but from a feeling of calling to teach those pretentious bastards the principle of subordination. And the monks all agree with me. They came by the other night. They sat with me. The Hegumen said that, in their dreams, they had discovered what happened to the Etruscans. What’s an Etruscan, I asked. And the Hegumen said that, long ago, where Rome and the so-called Vicarius Dei Filii are today, a people named the Rascians used to live, who one day disappeared from the face of the Earth. Just as we ourselves intend to do. Their priests-dreamers, going into the future down the path of dreams, saw what will one day happen on the ill-fated Apennine peninsula. One night, they all went to sleep and in their dream they saw a new country across the sea, mountainous and water-rich, so they woke up there and, in order to cover their tracks in history, they called themselves by a new name – the Serbs. A shocking tale. It was told, as I later found out, to soften my heart and quiet my anger. Because, as they departed, the Hegumen took me aside and said that there, beyond it all, Margot was meeting with Von Kurtiz. Grossman told me the same thing. They see the two of them, they say, under my windows, in the dark of night, their necks bloody. And for the first time, I was overcome with sadness instead of rage. Is it possible that not even death, I thought, is able to overcome infidelity and treason? And then two tears appeared in the corners of my eyes: Oh, Margot, Margot…

I wrote a Code. Rigorous but fair. If you cut off someone’s hand, cut off your own as well. If you do not do so, you will be executed. Why should we spread lawlessness? Why drag a third party (a judge, a guard, an executioner…) into the circulus vitiosus? The law is the law. That is what the first article says. If they did not want to submit to God’s law, let them groan under mine. Everyone is guilty and everyone should be punished. But the time of cowardly New Europe will come, when persecutions will not be anathematized. Perhaps not so soon. I’m not sure if the Renaissance has begun in Italy yet. It will never be clear to me what is so bad about injustice, torture and imprisonment; those are privileges. A certain path to the Kingdom of Heaven. Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. That is the second, last article of my Code. The rest, ten volumes, is filled with smudges. With the simulacra of letters. With the songs of troubadours. Sancta simplicitas! Whoever agrees to be robbed and murdered has the right to rob and murder. No one else. Since I have agreed to be murdered and robbed, I killed Margot and her lover but that did not help either. There, they have gone on cheating me, and they will continue to cheat me throughout the ages.

Before we vanish from the face of the Earth, I wish to leave behind a true account of my reign for my progeny, for the rabble that is patiently waiting the moment of their birth. To avenge myself ahead of time on the gloomy writers of history. I can already see them rifling through libraries, digging into dusty charters, scribbling treatises about what I did, what I thought, where I was mistaken, disturbing me in death just as my subjects disturbed me in life. Should they be allowed to control the reins of my actions from the fog of the future? I will put an end to the tyranny of the unborn, to the fruits of our common sin, to those who would deepen our transgressions; so that, from the nothingness of my present time, the profane who are wallowing in the mud of the past will not be able to find arguments to justify their own present time, which is even more oblivious.

I will not allow them to write my history, I will write theirs. By their own hand, on their own paper. As Radbertus of Odense says, can those who do not exist know anything? Even when they take on human form, what can they know of events that have vanished without a trace? I will make mistakes and lie, I admit, but I will not agree that that means I am godless. Now, they call me Charles the Clairvoyant, Charles the Edified, but as soon as I die history will remember me as the Ugly, history into which I am inserting myself by force in order to destroy it, in disgust. I want to overtake time. To describe it before a certain time is reached and then time will have no choice but to be exactly as I have determined it should be in my moment of divine inspiration. Quod dixi dixi! And that is why others should be born who will write down my thoughts. The wretches. They will think that those thoughts are theirs, and they will not even know that they do not exist yet. Isn’t this a contradiction? It makes no difference. Grossman! Write this down: I, Charles the Hideous, in the name of God, decree that the following should be born: Herbert Meier, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, Çulaba Çulabi (what a silly name), Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Sava Djakonov, Rheiner Meier, his son Ernest, Afanasij Yermolayev, a dozen supplementary characters, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Kowalsky, yes, Joseph Kowalsky, Kowalskyyyy!

“No religion can change the world, and no single fact can ever refute a religion.” Thus will Oswald Spengler write on the eve of one of the slaughters of the future. Hundreds of years will pass in vain; even then this will be clear to no one. Years pass in vain; that’s the first premise of this chapter of HISTORY. Thousands of futile years. I watch Grossman: hunchbacked, wrapped in a bearskin, he is writing down my words. The second S in his name has gotten somehow smaller, grown pale. Were I to ask him: Do you get the meaning of Spengler’s words, he would say: Yes, Sire; were I to ask him: Are you dead? He would answer: Yes, Sire. Complete obedience! The most certain path to the Kingdom of Heaven. Years spent at the Theological Seminary in Uppsala have left their indelible mark. But he did not learn anything about religion and facts there. He cannot be blamed for that, such knowledge is not gained by study. It is inborn, as in my case. And yet, I am not proud of it; genius brings a heap of unpleasantness with it. With it you attract the rage of the average folk. There, just now – although that now will have to wait its turn in the chronological order – one of the countless scribblers, a certain Herbert Meier, is writing and proving that I never even existed, that history makes no mention of me, that I am the fabrication of a mystical fraternity that I myself concocted. He is partially right, the good-for-nothing Meier; insofar as I am not a fact. I extracted myself from my shell-of-fact, thank God, and I watch what is going on at the grandiose fairground that stretches across the centuries in both directions. I suppose now it is understandable how it is that I know what happens in the distant past and far into the future: I am not a fact, I simply believe that I exist; that gives me the ability to recognize facts that are all happening at the same time, but for the sake of difficulty, they enter the present one by one. Time is just the normal ordering of facts, fact after fact: bones, skulls, written records; that fabulous heap of things needs to have a certain order. Isn’t that so, Grossman? Yes, Sire. Then write this down: Construction of the Tower of Babylon happened just a moment ago, Judgment Day will happen in the next. All that occurs in between is not time. Only facts occur.

But I did not come into the world to adapt myself to its rules. From early childhood I was unable to see any deeper difference between the blueprints of cities and the cities that are built. The third dimension, which the scholars of my court pushed under my nose, made me laugh. This so-called third dimension is the same as a carrot strung to a stick and hung in front of a donkey’s eyes. No one has any use of it, and it has done damage to many. Because, if you set off to catch it, if you head off into that ostensible distance, it moves away, it does not allow you near, but it draws you forward, like the carrot does the donkey, straight into trouble and death. Yeah, yeah, the scholars, professors and metaphysicists will cry out in protest, “But we live in this world, we have a soul and a spirit.” One load of nonsense after another. No one has ever proven that. Life, let the professors get it into their heads, is not a fact. Don’t be disgusted, Grossman, I am not denying the existence of the soul and spirit, far from it, I am denying the existence of the scholars and professors, I am denying that you exist. You are the parasites of your souls. You are a nasty disease that your souls must survive. You, as Grossman, or as Grosman, you are nothing. It is in my power to order you to go back to the beginning of HISTORY, to scratch out “Grossman” wherever it is written, and to replace it with, let’s say, “Gruber.” I can order you to embellish an even darker autobiography than the one you wrote, the one you rebelled against when I died, scribbling your pitiful denunciations in the margins. Assine! No biography can be as horrible as its owner can. But I have still not died in the world of facts. I just want you to know that I can see through your actions. Half-wit! To whom do you think you are justifying yourself? Haven’t I told you hundreds of times that history will never mention us? Why don’t you free yourself of your vanity? As if I cared, the opinions of a bunch of vagabonds in the future about the majordomo of an imaginary king. Then again, there are many things that I cannot understand. Why, for example, am I putting all my effort into taking you, together with the rabble who call themselves my subjects, out of history and saving you from death? To make matters worse, I will probably succeed. Now, that’s absurd: one person spends his whole life on a pillar eating butterflies and moss, and he gets stuck in hell, and you – who are worried about whether your name is written with one S or two – you get into heaven. The will of God is mysterious. Didn’t Jesus himself save a thief?

Last night, Joseph Ferrarius visited me in my dreams. He is sailing, he said, with his brothers toward the north to find an island that does not exist. Go ahead and laugh, you twerp. That doesn’t surprise me. They have sailed from the lousy world of facts and will find an island which will, in their world of faith and mine, become a fact. No one else will know of it. How else can one save oneself from the upcoming onslaught of researchers, adventurers, archeologists, geologists and oceanographers? Why, here in another two hundred years or so they will find America. For now, Grossman, America is not a fact, remember that, and therefore it doesn’t exist. If you were to tell someone that, across the way from Normandy, there is a world as big as ours, they would think you are a lunatic. And it does exist. But you will tell that to no one. You are a conformist! Pardon me, Sire, would you please repeat that last word. No, there’s no point in it. It’s too early for that word. Listen to what I am saying: There will come a time when people will no longer believe that God exists. That’s impossible, Sire. It’s possible, unfortunately. Just as you, brainwashed by Ptolemaic geocentrism, think that I’m babbling about another continent, so will future Grossmans, because God is not a fact, think that God was concocted by man in order to be less afraid. God is the eighth continent, Grossman. He is neither good nor evil, neither great nor small. God is something different. Always something different. And, please, spare me your ecclesiastical footnotes denouncing me to the future generations and accusing me of heresy.

And wait till you hear this. Your jaw will drop in amazement. Margot came to me last night. Not with her bleeding head under her arm as she appears to you and other superstitious twits like you. I was just getting ready to retire for the evening, prepared for my showdown with the evil spirits awaiting me on the boundary between dreams and wakening, when Margot burst in. Her presence. Not her ghost, mind you, but her presence, a bit unpleasant in the light of her infidelity and my vengeance. What do you want to tell me? I thought, and Margot answered: Charles, I am so lonely. You’re looking at me with suspicion, majordomo, you’re thinking that the Hideous is jabbering, seeing things; the queen is dead and she cannot possibly say anything. Half-wit, words do not exist for us to communicate; remember the book of Genesis when the Lord confounded the languages. Words exist to cause misunderstanding. And yet, they are so powerful. You are just a word – Grossman. Take out the ‘o’ and ‘a,’ the soul, and all you have left are consonants – Grssmn, or your skeleton, like the ones we saw in the monastery labyrinth. But let’s leave the mantra aside. Alone, you say, Margot, I said somehow, and she confirmed it. I could have explained to her that loneliness is our destiny, that nothing can be done about it, but out of piety toward her death (which she has taken so seriously) I said nothing, but rather adjusted my presence so that she could feel some kind of sympathy. I say presence because even you know that the thing the courtiers and plebes hold to be my presence is just hanging about miserably on the throne, dusty, covered with mildew. The soul is closest to the body when it is not equated with it, that must be clear to you. The body is necessary so that everything is not ethereal, too ethereal for rogues like you and the other dropouts that you studied Patristics with. Habet mulier animam, Grossman? Habet, Sire. You keep hanging on to your errors, but that improves your reputation in my eyes. That’s the only thing you have approached like a man, overcoming your fear. That error makes you a man. But you see, as time passed even I, having learned something new, have changed my point of view. I will not say that a woman has a soul, certainly not, but something like a soul, that’s possible. Hand me that parchment. I’ll draw you a representation of the male anima and the female animula:

You see? The horizontal line is missing. I could tell you about that for hours, but it’s no use. You won’t understand, and anyway Jung will write about it better one day. And anyway, we’ve got business to do. Write! God loves radical changes. Write down what Meister Eckhart will say about that, because his books will be burned. “If a man completely rises above his sin and renounces it, then God, who is true to his promise, will act as if the sinner never sinned. He won’t allow him to suffer for a moment because of his sin. If he committed his sins even as much as all people sinned all together, God will not force him to atone for them. In doing so, God established a closeness to man that he created with no other being. He will not consider what a man used to be. God is the God of the present.” And now, Grossman, let’s get down to work. We need to write history. Every moment is precious. While I’m here lamenting Margot, in the blink of an eye, some son of a bitch is born and tangles all the threads. The Schism has already occurred; so, the split ad acta. The Reformation must be prepared for. The what? The Reformation, you idiot. I’m sorry, Sire, I don’t know that word. I don’t know the details, either. Martin Luther is only four years old right now. But it’s not my business to deal with the details. I already said that God loves radical changes. As opposed to the Pope and his flatterers who have built into the heart the same thing the pharaoh built in stone – a pyramid, Grossman, an Egyptian pyramid. In doing so they committed blasphemy because the Spirit is not building material. They want to withdraw inside, to hide from God, but it will do them no good. God is always inside. We’re the ones on the outside. It’s a mistaken projection, that’s all. Here, I see a new split in the church. That’s why I walled up all the doors at the monastery of St. Panfucius. Do you think the split between Constantinople and Rome came about because of such a sophisticated theological question as the Filioque? No. “You think that I have come to bring peace on Earth!” the Lord says. “No, I say unto you, I come to bring discord.”

Do you understand? No, Sire. Even better. Write. The division in the churches is necessary because of historical progress. The Eastern Church mustered the strength to bear the cross and become a martyr. The deadly sin of her sister, the Roman curia, was not debauchery, not Simony, not the sale of indulgences, but architecture. It will spread in the west in order to raise its buildings, in order to spread its earthly kingdom. Will Maxim the Confessor discover America? No. Christopher Columbus will find it. But not before the Renaissance. Sire, you keep mentioning the Renaissance. Yes, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes reality. That’s the everyday magic of words. Just as I kept repeating Grossman, Grossman, Grossman, until you finally appeared at my side in that damned tavern, full of quotations and rage, real, but also false. So I keep repeating the Renaissance, the Renaissance, the Renaissance. And the result? In 1369 – Bogdan Suchodolski will write – Leonardo Bruni will be born. That’s the wrong date. The real date is 1368. But that changes nothing. Write, so that Suchodolski will have someone to copy from: 1380 – the birth of Poggio Bracciolini, 1377 – Filippo Brunelleschi, 1378 – Lorenzo Gilberti; in 1386 the famous Donatello will be born, Fra Angelico circa 1390, Jan Van Eyck in 1397, that same year (underline it) Johann Gutenberg. The material basis of desacralization is, essentially, laid; the dates are perhaps not accurate, but there’s not much use in chronology anyway. We have to wait for the year 1401 for one of our own to be born, Nicholas of Kues. And don’t ask superfluous questions. Do not try to discover that which you cannot find out. Remember once and for all, Grossman, we are not interested in history. We are interested in its ruin. Others are here to see that history is made. We are meant to undermine it. Don’t forget that the characteristic of our time, according to Suchodolski, and I quote, is “the mystical hope of fixing the world by destroying it.” I don’t understand, Sire; these contradictions aren’t clear to me. You don’t understand, Grossman. You have a German name with two ornate Ss, and you don’t know that the WEST in German is ABENDLAND – the land of twilight. No, Sire. What language are we speaking then? What alphabet are you using to write down my words? Nothing can be confirmed with certainty. Why is that so, Sire? Because everything is relative. Does that mean anything to you? No, Sire. Let me explain: Everything is relative because E=MC2.

To keep Grossman from accusing me of heresy, I’m thinking in cursive. I closed my eyes and I’m watching him through the slit between my eyelashes, which confuses me because my eyelashes are down there, on my body, on the throne. One way or the other, it is impossible to avoid anthropomorphism. I am watching, as I said, Grossman. Thinking that I am asleep, he’s adding in his disloyal footnotes. From down on the throne, I could (since the connections are never broken) cry out: Guards, arrest Grossman! But what’s the point? Like the professors of whom he is the forerunner, he has simply convinced himself that he can smuggle in the truth, and somehow deserve his place in some sort of musty book. Those are the very historical errors with which I am constantly obsessed. Why do the superficial souls so easily accept the thesis that history is a continuum in which one event causes another, which is complete nonsense? I can see, I swear to God, everything that has happened and everything that will happen, insofar as that is possible for a man. There is no cause-effect relationship. It is all just a whim of mine. The Spirit allowed me to write history. Not because of my abilities. Just as easily it could have given that task to Grossman, and nothing would change. I don’t know how to explain that. If this is all not just a dream, I can see the future of the miserable New Europe with absolute clarity, not because that future is a necessity, but because I want it to be that way. Let me repeat: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Gothic, the Baroque, the Enlightenment, Rationalism, Bacon, Boehme, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, Grotius, Hobbes, Cudworth, Pufendorf, Newton, Leibnitz, Wolf, Berkeley, Hume, Helvétius, Rousseau, Jacobi, Kant, Fichte, Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling, Hegel, Marx. Then came two of our own: Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, no, first came Joseph Fitzgerald Queensdale, then he. Just names that I dreamed up, but which will usurp those bodies and minds, thinking that they are a necessity and not just a whim. All those learned gentlemen will feel challenged to discuss the past, never guessing that they are just a tile in a mosaic that should be taken apart. All of that is being demolished. Atomized. History is nothing more than the process of the continuous atomization of property. Once long ago, the owner of the Earth was its creator, God. Then the Earth was ruled by kings. Then came feudalism, followed by capitalism, and finally socialism where everyone is the owner, where everyone owns everything, but there is nothing left to own.

From time to time, I’m overcome by doubt. It is not to be excluded that all of this is just a dream. Perhaps those future positivists, with that fellow Meier among them, are correct after all when they claim that I am just an ordinary mystification. I will leave that possibility open, but things will unwind just as I foresaw them and predetermined them, regardless of my ontological status. And not just that. I know the conditions under which all of this will collapse in flames. It is possible to do that even now, I mean in terms of metaphysics; but the technological knowledge of my epoch has not reached the state where it can solve the purely technical problem of the apocalypse. I must leave that to the future generations, to the new sort who will, defying gravity, ride on magical two-wheelers, despised by the world, just like our Lord who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. There you have it, including such hesitations in my reflections, I am once again proving that I have a democratic orientation. Which is one more historical paradox: the democrats of the future will not allow their dreams to be called into doubt. With their heads full of the thoughts of the dead who came before them, doubting nothing whatsoever, they will bravely march forward and become dead men themselves. True enough, we will help them with all our might. Having slipped in among their ranks, clandestinely. We will construct their machines, which Grossman believes to be the contraptions of the Devil. The fool. The Devil was never so obvious. But the machines are a theological problem after all. Just as God created man, and man rebelled against his creator, so will man create machines and the machines will rebel against people. Hegel will write about this in the parable of the master and the slave. One day, machines will be able to think. Huh, if such a thought ever crossed Grossman’s mind, he would tie himself to the stake and set himself on fire. The dogmatic consciousness that sees only here and now, never dreaming that they have already become the past. And not only will machines think, they will think faster and better than people. There you have it, the beginnings of cybernetics! People will stop thinking. They will become stunted. They will grow dull from their laziness and vices. The difference is great between them and, let’s say, me: I have the ability to reflect on all of that, observe Grossman, and at the same time I am holding an audience of tavern owners and passing judgments in the ridiculous court cases of my subjects. Why, even Grossman, in comparison to the future generations, seems to be a genius. All kinds of thoughts are roaming through his head at the same time while he is writing down my soliloquy, but all of that, as Lenin would (and will) say is… petit-bourgeois, petty-minded. Grossman can think of nothing without getting himself involved, without calculating whether something is profitable for him or not. A typical modern man. One night I psychoanalyzed him, just for fun, and he thought I was interrogating him. And this was my conclusion: Grossman is an orthodox Christian just because Christianity is the state religion of our time, not to mention a matter of decorum, a rule of proper manners. However, if he were accidentally born at the beginning of the 20th century, I’ll bet that he would be in the first ranks to charge the Winter Palace. As pedantic as he is, he would create a fine career for himself, but sooner or later Dzhugashvili would get rid of him, just as I will, sooner or later, get rid of him, though in a subtle way so that he thinks he is dying a natural death and has a place waiting for him in heaven. But the means of getting rid of someone are a matter of the tastes of a time. In any case, because of his faithful service, he will be buried in his marvelous mausoleum, embellished with his name including two large Ss.

Grossman! Wake up! I’m sorry, Sire, I fell asleep. I was tricked into dreaming. And what did you dream? Ugh, I dreamt that you were watching me through your half-closed eyelids, saying things that made the hair on my neck stand up. Then I found myself in a crowd rushing at some sort of palace shouting, I remember it well, in some language I don’t know “da zdravstvuet tovarishch Lenin.” And then? Then you woke me up. Yes, Grossman, forget about your meaningless dreams, it’s time for us to get back to work. So, America. Forgetting which direction it is that leads to the real homeland, they will head for the west, longing for the wide-open, hungry for space, tortured by the clench of their hardened souls. Instead of searching along the vertical, they will head off for the horizontal. Do you know what that means? It means that they will keep running in circles. In order to avoid dizziness from the heights, they will submit to the grave dizziness of the soil; they will concoct races and adore blood. Do you know the root of the word “vertical”? No, Sire. It’s from the root vertigo, dizziness. So much for the Latin you learned at Uppsala. Not to mention the Greek. But never mind, I’m not interested in diplomas. Let’s get back to work. Write this: Disoriented by the vertigo, they will call their demise “progress.” Unless they mean the progress of their demise. All of the gnomes, melusines, nymphs, werewolves, and household demons that we so democratically tolerate in our kingdom, allowing them to multiply and perform their rituals, all of those beings about whom Bombastus Paracelsus wrote about, or should write about, so inspirationally, they will all be destroyed and proclaimed to be fictitious. Don’t you frown at me, I know those beings don’t exist, but they must be destroyed first so that something more real can come next. And don’t flatter yourself that you are much more real than a gnome. I can convince you otherwise in an instant. Just a wink of my eye and you’ll find yourself in your mausoleum in body, with your soul beneath, with Von Kurtiz and that whore Margot, where you can all gossip about me to your heart’s content, if you can find anyone to listen to you. Oh, Margot! The eternal struggle of the animus and anima. Perhaps you had a hand in this as well, Grossman; I could swear that you are prepared to do anything just to discredit me in the eyes of the senseless mobs of the future who will, one way or another, hate kings and all other noble things. I’ll bet you are the one who brought Kurtiz to be around the queen. But that’s all right, I’ll leave that up to your conscience which irresistibly reminds me of the Euclidean understanding of spatial perspective: far away things look small so they fill you with the false hope that your sins are forgiven. You’re not alone in such observations. In just a few years, art will head down the path of your conscience. Is it worthwhile for me to mention: every perspective ends up in a dead-end. You are looking at me with your inherent disbelief, with that look that makes me wonder if you are my majordomo or my court jester. Or both. I am explaining things, not for your sake, you won’t understand them; art will destroy Europe. That is why the Jews forbade the presentation of images. Those lousy painters, those producers of illusions, wishing to represent reality, expressing themselves through their ridiculous senses, they will make reality unreal. They will teach generations to observe the world with eyes trained by their pictures. Indeed, the day will come when a house in the distance will look small, quite small. Sire, I really cannot believe that. I know that the world will meet its demise, but that houses where people live can look smaller than a man, I cannot believe that at all. That doesn’t surprise me. You are not here to believe or not believe, but to write. You will gain eternal life for that. But this business with perspective, it will be precisely as I have said. Artists will shrink people. They will shorten distances. They will draw the New Europe. Let me go farther than the time in which my thoughts will be read like artistic fiction, in which all of this will be a chapter in an insignificant novel, let me tell you a secret. In the end of all things, when time nears its end, Europe will turn into an enormous library and an endless gallery of pictures. My poor Grossman, long before that apocalyptic twilight, everyone will have their own picture, down to the last busboy in the tavern. At the moment that is the privilege of the kings and high nobility. In those days, the kings will already be in museums. I won’t be. Did you write the history of the sect of Two-Wheelers? No, Sire, I did not have the time. What do you mean, didn’t have the time? I’m either writing down your words, or I’m down there by the throne. But why don’t you write the history at the same time you are writing down my words. I’m sorry, Sire, but that’s absurd. Never mind, just keep writing, the time will come when that will cause no one to wonder. Now, where was I? Oh, yes! In the year nineteen fifty-th…

(Remainder of the manuscript destroyed)