by Unknown
While the crowds waited in devoutness outside, inside, the wise men with their gaze lowered before the busts of their predecessors, the Lorffes and Ilectors, and with their faces buried in countless piles of miniature books that contained the crystallisation of the all the intellect of the entire human history, carried on discussing and deliberating feverishly. But still no results…
5-VI
(Late at night)
“But God chose what is foolish in the world
to shame the wise”
The Nibelvirches had begun to multiply and become more frequent both in the Valley of the Roses and in distant countries, and almost none were fatal after the survival of Alexis Volky. His cry of ecstasy and his subsequent peaceful sermon, which, as the days went by, encouraged other triumphant voices and individual spirits to speak up. But the crowds only recognised and trusted the Aidersen Institute. That’s what they had learned to respect and listen to through a long tradition passed from father to child and that’s where they had laid the hopes of centuries! But the Aidersen remained silent and cautious. And it would stay that way for weeks to come.
6-VI
Nowadays the entire holy place is unfenced. I saw it in the Swage. A simple string of white marble, sculpted into small rectangular rings, shields it from careless missteps. Even a child could jump over it if one wanted to. But no one crosses. They all go round it anti-clockwise, starting from the cluster of the small cedar trees. Passing through there, one finds oneself in a large, stark white courtyard —or at least so it seems on the Reigen-Swage— with a few columns and walls which, up to a certain height, seem to be made of ivory. In the background, very close to the ancient white wall, beneath the dome with the Novotronium by Nikorski, you can see the seven holy lights and the banners fluttering in the azure light. The entire sanctuary is paved with a single pure white, marble-like slab and the surrounding area is covered with the famous light blue rosebushes, just like in the Pantheon.
Now I’m seeing the same place again, but the way it used to look. It’s identical! I saw the white-bearded Alexis Volky dressed in the white robe standing tall—as the septuagenarian elder has always been under— the stars as he experienced his majestic, god-like Great Moment.
How many times had Jaeger and Stefan talked to me about this place and with how much emotion! I clearly see Volky’s student Mary-Lea sitting on the stairs at the feet of the great Master, hurt, and now destined for the Beyond, away from the ugliness of this life. You can see her crying with joy. She doesn’t hide her face; she keeps her head up instead, as if in the midst of ecstasy and inspiration.
You see the old man standing upright and motionless, with his head up, staring at the vast state. It looks like a white vision. The ecstasy, the awe and the “holy horror” of the first moments are engraved on his face and have left a trace of light, a glow beyond description on it. He is no longer trembling and you can clearly see how he is now, a master of his own emotion. He knows there is no reason to boast; it just happened that out of all people, he proved to be the most prepared. That’s all… He’s just another one of us, with the exception that he was able to withstand this “sudden stroke of light”, because for him it wasn’t so sudden. The “exquisite divine spark” had hit on real rock this time!
Always upright and stiff, he looks towards the horizon while a tear rolls down his pale, ascetic face. I wonder what he’s thinking… Is he seeing the dawn of the new spiritual day down there on the horizon? Or is he thinking about the past and pondering the incredible outcome of the history of mankind?
You see, he had spent his whole life in the Aidersen Institute since he was a young child. He had had made the dreams of his ancestors and Chillerin’s promise his own, and he cared for them deeply…
THE STORY OF MARY-LEA: A MODERN SAINT
7-VI
A few days later he gave his name to Mary-Lea—adopting her posthumously—a long tradition in the Valley among beloved teachers and students who happened to lose their lives prematurely and then attended her funeral in the Aidersen, among the crowds of wise men and the thousands upon thousands of other people, standing strong and proud, without shedding a single tear.
That day was an apotheosis for Mary-Lea, as thereafter she would be remembered in the Aidersian tradition as one of the most popular figures of modern spiritual culture. Her funeral pyre was surrounded by thousands of flowers from all around the world, and thousands of people, all dressed in white, knelt around the ashes of that noble Troendin, whose soul couldn’t bear the “breaking of the bonds” and the “nostalgia of the heavenly homeland”.
On the 7th and 8th of September, the last two days of her life, after having escaped from the Valley, she wandered in remote lands, somewhat mentally unstable and unable to master her thoughts. The last people that she encountered were left with the impression that she was possessed by obsessive thoughts.
Two gardeners in Doriani said that on the morning of the 8th, a beautiful blond girl with deep blue eyes dressed in a long white dress had stopped them and asked them the way to the sea and actually explained to them that she was heading to the seaside, bringing very good news to a young lad who had been waiting there for a response, patiently, for thousands of years… In fact, she even repeated the same phrase in ancient German: “Er wartet auf ein Antwort”, which means, “He’s waiting for an answer”.
Further down, there was a bevy of workers who were on their way back from work at the break of dawn. To them she spoke normally and with reason. They offered her grapes and she accepted them. Three hours before noon, in the orange groves of East Eliki, she gave her bracelet as a gift to the security guard’s little daughter. She sat down in the workshop for a quarter of an hour and asked for some water. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying all night long, but still, she spoke coherently. What drew her attention were the blooming chestnut trees, and she spoke about them to the guard’s wife.
She drowned that same evening. She was found on a desolate part of the seashore at dawn. Two fishermen, father and son—insignificant people, whose names, however, made it into the history pages—dragged her body out of the water. I watched that scene on the Reigen-Swage. Her youthful body hadn’t been deformed in the least, and the long, white, wet dress clung to her curves. That was the end of this first “Saint of the Nojere”, the first beloved, immortal figure of the “New Era”.
Now every year on the anniversary of her death, fifteen days before New Year’s Day, thousands of people, dressed in white robes and carrying baskets with fresh flowers and wreaths, walk on and on along the beach singing hymns, as a sign of remembrance and appreciation. Two hours before midnight, they throw their flowers in the deep blue sea.
Mary-Lea Volky was a good spirit and is now considered a friend and patron of girls and women. All her other contemporaries grew old, succumbed to the laws of biological decay and left this world. But Mary-Lea stayed the same forever: nineteen, uncorrupted and immortal, a peer of every generation! Her name has been turned into poetry and legends; she has become a muse! Thousands of small statues, busts and monuments of her exist all over the world, and she is always depicted with golden hair, lips like cherry, and deep, sea-blue eyes filled with the light of the Mediterranean. Countless of finely crafted amulets and icons are made every year as a tribute to her. Her memory has been linked in people’s hearts to some kind of a supernatural bright light that attracts you in such a powerful way that it’s impossible to be put into words.
Silvia and Hilda had brought her up in conversation several times before I knew who she was. In fact, I remember one time in particular: one night back in our villas they mentioned her while we were gazing at the stars Arcturus and Vega through a small telescope…
THE JUDGEMENT OF THE AIDERSEN INSTITUTE
A new beginning
8-VI
On one of the last days of September—when it was finally clear that facts had spoken for themselves—the Aidersen Institute broke its silence. The Institute wit
h the unique global prestige reminded people how, about fourteen thousand years ago, man had managed to become a small God in study of the physical world and the relevant technical applications and, for the first time ever, created a star through the processes of “fusion and division”. What was happening now was as “divine” as that scientific and technological breakthrough that had occurred back then, only now it concerned every aspect of life! Again like a small god, man was finally able to tear away the veil of the “Big Secret” and see what was behind it.
What followed? We already know. It was meant for this generation to realise the dream of thousands of years and generations ago and for man to climb high up on the top of the Valley and finally “see”. They said that Alexis Volky was the first “chosen one” but that hundreds of others followed the year after, and thousands more the year after that. And that’s how now people know. They don’t just believe anymore; they’ve seen it, they know!
“The Nibelvirch had to come,” said Arald, another Aidersian, a month later, “in order for the true quality, content and meaning of the other Birches to clearly show and shine!”
After people realised what had just happened, some praised God for having been born in this era and being part of this holy generation and others praised Volky for having endured so much and having paved the way for the rest of humanity.
In the beginning and for a considerable period of time, people from all over the world had neglected their jobs and had almost completely given up on all worldly matters and concerns. They were still unable to handle what had happened; they just didn’t know how yet.
MASS SUICIDES AND THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
9-VI
Over the coming months Volky and the other great men of the Aidersen felt the need to stop once and for all the “mass exodus” that followed, because they found themselves in front of hundreds and then thousands of cases of people whose motive for life had subsided and what had now replaced it was a new impulse, that of “desertion” and “escape”, which most often manifested itself in people as a consequence of the Nibelvirch.
This new impulse had emerged together with the incredible feelings of happiness, spiritual peace, a kind of divine joy and a nearly “Socratic” conciliation with death but it had also brought with it a disregard for all worldly things, which now felt insignificant to people, foreign and unworthy peoples’ concern.
What they could not handle was not the daily routine, the realities and the small joys and sorrows of life; it was that all their dreams, loves, loved ones that were no longer by their side, the happiest moments of their lives, things that they used to think of as mere memories, had now been condensed into an incredible force that had come back to haunt them.
There came days in 986 and 987 (3382 and 3383 AD) when the spiritual leadership of the planet was seriously concerned whether this “early psychological and spiritual maturity”, this leap in biological evolution and spiritual progress, had come at a good time, and whether the Valley’s centuries-long project would have unpleasant consequences as well. Almost everyone had proven far from being prepared, even the Ilectors, with the only exception of a few hundred imperturbable elders, followers of Volky.
Creation, with wise foresight, had successfully hidden its secrets from man, with great zeal and for thousands of years. They recalled that the first two centuries of the Valley many of them were against this enormous spiritual task and strongly insisted on putting an end to the special effort to achieve an advanced spiritual culture and create an intellectually superior man. In short, they wanted to say: This is how things are and they are fine the way they are; let them evolve at their own pace and don’t rush them because God knows what any action that accelerates the natural process may awaken…
The solution they came up with in order to stop the “mass exodus” was to highlight the purposefulness and necessity of every stage in human life on earth, including the one they were going through at the time. They convinced people that even that tough phase was a small but essential part of the Samith and it was their duty to go through that too. They told them that “we all come to this life with a purpose: to love much and give a piece of ourselves to others, even if that causes us pain, to be thirsty for the beautiful and the true, to get to know the worldly wonders of nature and help the weakest creatures, and to leave this life when our time comes and not before like deserters.
They stressed that what they saw should in no case be linked to the termination of life on earth. On the contrary. They told them that the purpose is for life to go on and take an upward course, each time getting one step closer to perfection, to the truth! “If we become extinct, how is this upward course going to continue? Will you deprive the next generations of your own species of the chance to one day compare themselves to our generation and feel as proud of their progress as we feel today, compared to our ancestors? We are the indispensable link between the past and the future. We are the present and we must not be lost!”
Alongside this argument, commands were given by the Valley for immediate plans that would result in an even better organisation of society, a society that would give its members new life incentives. Major infrastructural projects were initiated, research for new inventions was announced, new institutions were established and better associations were created almost in all areas of social life. Even pan-European music festivals were organised, which served as a distraction, stimulating people’s interest in life again.
10-VI
All this persistent campaign resulted in a considerable mitigation of the aforementioned escape impulse and in a decrease in the numbers of such incidents. As it was expected, they failed to completely eliminate them during the first year. In fact the Aidersen later said: “It is very difficult to keep those who are dying of thirst from running straight towards a well when one appears before them.”
They were right. Because what did people have until then? What did they live on? They lived on little drops of water that evaporated very quickly. However, despite the difficulties faced the following year, the problem gradually subsided until it was completely eliminated. It didn’t happen all at once—it couldn’t have—but step by step. The world returned to a normal pace of life, but everyone had kept deep inside their soul the memory of what was later to be characterised as “the most important moment of the spiritual progress of mankind.”
By that time, of course, all of their questions had been resolved and everything had an explanation: the “sense of living in a foreign land”, the “thirst for the eternal”, the “feeling of deprivation”. The Nibelvirch had shown people where it all came from.
11-VI
From the early 987 and up until now, the Valley has been studying the classics with a new, unprecedented zeal. Everything has acquired a new meaning: from Socrates and Plato to Confucius, Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus. Even the conception of infinity, the incorruptible, the contrast between the present and eternity had become subject to re-evaluation. No one spoke of the “struggle of man against his fate” anymore. No one spoke of the “conflict between the individual and the world” either.
In fact, about the suicides of past times they now say that their cause was neither the “pain of love” nor the “excessive sensitivity.” The reason was “the sacred thirst of soul and the longing for the Samith.”
11-VI Again
(Late at night)
Tomorrow morning I don’t have a lesson with Lain, and I’m not planning on writing either. I intend to spend the whole day outside the city. Tonight’s starlight is magical. I think that tomorrow we’ll have the first sunny spring day with clear blue skies. It smells like spring already.
Retsstats Aarsdag, MDX (anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Commonwealth)
Bells, bells, bells, bells ringing interminably since the very first morning hours, as if it were Holy Saturday. If you ask them, they’ll tell you it symbolises the “Resurrection of our species”!
The great leaders are absent today.
They all have a meeting in the Valley. I’m sitting on the terrace and looking down. There are few people on the streets. The parks and groves are glistening. It gives me such a pleasure to walk in the morning sun… I could do it forever! Today the city is calling you to walk it!
12-VI
Markfor is a state that you can very easily fall in love with. Yesterday I felt once again how right these people’s way of thinking and living is. And now that our stay here is almost over and we will soon begin a tour of the central European states and then around the Rosernes Dal, I feel an even greater attraction to this place, almost like a craving.
Yesterday morning I discovered the hedgerows of Leouras, while in search of the gallery of the Medici, a green and silent area, too green and too silent to be part of the city centre. But vast contrasts are one of Markfor’s best characteristics. You can still see the flocks of linsens and velo scooters and hear the roar of the crowds flooding the main arteries of the city from half a mile away. But if you stray a little bit, you suddenly come across idyllic landscapes, as if you’ve travelled to a faraway land on a magical journey; and yet, you’ve only walked for a few minutes.
SIGHTSEEING IN MARKFOR
For those who love the tradition of the old state, the most beautiful part of Markfor is found on the other side of the block. Here it’s like turning the clock back four hundred years: huge mansions that appear uninhabited, vast schools and classrooms that look desolate and masterful architectural libraries with content that my knowledge and education doesn’t yet allow me to appreciate. Westward, inside the huge park, you can see the Rector's Palace with the famous Doric colonnade in the background. Nearby you’ll find the study areas of the Laureatis with the statue of Giordano Bruno in the middle, and the auditorium of Milioki, an old founder and facilitator of theirs. And there’s their poet, Selius! I’ve read something of his. His monument is extremely tall compared to all the other marble statues. It is bronze and all six sides of the giant pedestal are embellished with relief representations of his life and quotes taken from his most beautiful lyrical pieces.
