Suffering and happiness, always so close together. God’s wonderful and mysterious plan. The secret of life and faith: trust in God.
But this was the problem: she had lost her unconditional trust when Peter flew away last night. She tried to picture the copper island. She tried to imagine how Peter had landed there with his parachute. But the images remained hazy, as if shrouded by fog. Why hadn’t she tried to stop him making this insane attempt? It was possible that he was dead, that he had crashed or drowned, or that they had caught and tortured him, and perhaps she would never find out about it. At the thought that she might never see Peter again, she felt another wave of shame and guilt sweep over her. Not so much because she feared for Peter’s life, but because her own life seemed so endlessly empty if Peter was really dead.
With a painful sigh, Maria sat up. It was pointless to spend the entire day lying on the bed, waiting. Completely and utterly pointless. Worrying about Peter would drive her mad, even if she continued to pray her rosary. For a brief moment, Maria considered calling Don Luigi, but then she thought better of it. Too risky, too futile. At this point, neither Don Luigi nor anyone else could help Peter. One could only pray and hope. Hope that praying would help. Faith.
Maria remembered reading reports about tests that had been conducted at the renowned Princeton University, where already Albert Einstein had taught. A study group by the name of PEAR had used scientific and experimental methods to examine the long-distance capacity of the human consciousness and also of prayers on human beings and machines. The measurements revealed significant differences as to the well-being of the individuals who had been prayed for by others.
Although Maria did not need any scientific proof to be convinced of the power of prayer, she regarded the results as a silent triumph of faith.
And she knew that her faith would be strong, strong enough to save Peter’s life.
Filled with determination, she rose from her bed and got dressed. She wanted to do something, anything that could further Peter’s investigations. For Peter would come back. She was absolutely sure of that. He. Would. Come. Back. To her.
Maria drew the curtains open, letting light, life, and fresh air into the room. Go! But where to start? She was ready for action as she stood, thinking, in the middle of the small hotel room. Then she reached into the pocket of her raincoat and pulled out the only tangible clue that she had at this point: the amulet.
Since they had found the relic in the papal apartment, she had not looked at it again, not in detail. She had simply been too scared of this mysterious and occult item, which seemed to her like the gate into a darkness that might open at any time if one looked at it too closely.
Now, as she dared to give it a closer inspection, she saw how beautiful it was. The craftsmanship was stunning. It did not weigh much and it fitted easily into her hand and flattered her skin as she swayed it to and fro. The evenly crafted pearls of the necklace clicked softly. What a blue! Dove-cobalt-violet blue. The blue of the pearls and the medallion reminded Maria of the precious tanzanite that a vendor in Gulu had once offered to her.
Maria carried the amulet to the window. However, in the midday light, the tanzanite blue color of the amulet changed into a milky azure blue. As if it were imitating the color of the sky. Never before in her life had Maria seen such a blue. The pearls were too light to be made of stone. Nor were they made of painted wood. What kind of material was this? Maria assumed that the thread on which the pearls were strung was made of silk. Then again, it seemed doubtful that silk was durable enough to stand the test of centuries. Perhaps the pearls had been restrung over the years to replace the thread.
The craftsmanship of the amulet was also exceptional; the lines of the engraved copper and light symbol were so precise that they might have been made by a laser. The same applied to the strange characters that framed the symbol and adorned the sides of the medallion. The hieroglyph on the back looked much more uneven and seemed to have been added later. As if the unknown Egyptian artist had been in a great rush to avert a curse.
But Maria decided not to allow the amulet to frighten her again, and so she continued her examination.
»Talk to me!« she said, whispering to the amulet. »What are you?«
But the amulet kept silent, softly glinting in the midday sun. Maria placed the relic on the bed next to the rosary. And it was only at this moment that she noticed the obvious. Maria let out a bewildered cry when she recognized the remarkable resemblance between the amulet and the rosary. On the white sheet, the two items looked like siblings that had been reunited after a long separation. Two pearl string necklaces, one ending in a cross, the other in the circular medallion. Even the size of the pearls was identical. Which had to be a coincidence, as there were many different kinds of rosaries.
Quickly, Maria counted the number of pearls on the amulet. Fifty-four. Five less than in a rosary. Why fifty-four? Had the other pearls been lost over the centuries or was it that the number of pearls bore no significance? The latter was something that Maria could not believe. All of a sudden, she was convinced that there was nothing coincidental about this amulet. Whatever meaning it had, the creator of this object seemed to have known exactly what he was doing. So why fifty-four? Maria remembered what Don Luigi had once said about the fact that demons and the Templars had a penchant for numerology, and so she calculated the digit sum of fifty-four. It was nine, of all numbers, it was the number of the Knights Templar. A coincidence? Maria brushed the thought aside. Fifty-four pearls. In contrast to a rosary, the amulet was missing the larger beads for the Lord’s Prayers. Fifty-four equally sized pearls. Again, Maria was astounded how equally and evenly sized they were, and she would have placed any bet that they even weighed the same, down to the microgram. The amulet radiated symmetry and strictness, rhythm and homogeneity. And yet it also exuded mild superiority. It was like…
»… a prayer!« Maria called out in bewilderment. Now she understood that five pearls more or less did not make any difference. One could pray the amulet like a rosary. It seemed virtually to expect it.
Maria took a deep breath and thought about whether she should really do it. Praying the rosary with some mysterious occult item in her hand appeared highly blasphemous to her. Then again, they had found the amulet in the Pope’s apartment. And if it was really true, if the amulet was a gate to hell, then nothing would be better suited to keep this gate shut than prayers.
Maria took the amulet, collected herself for a moment, and then kneeled down in front of the bed. She was holding the blue relic like her rosary in both hands. Where she usually started with the cross, she now started with the medallion and prayed the Apostles’ Creed.
I believe in God,
the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ,
His only Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty;
from thence He shall come
to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Catholic Church,
the communion of Saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and life everlasting.
Amen.
Then Maria took the first pearl in her hand and prayed the first Hail Mary.
»Hail Mary, full of grace.
Our Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,
whom you, Blessed Virgin, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.«
She prayed bead after bead, three times the entire neck
lace. And she ended each Hail Mary by adding one of the mysteries of Christ’s life:
The visitation of Mary to Saint Elizabeth.
The Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.
Finding Jesus in the Temple.
The Joyful Mysteries, the Luminous Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries and the Glorious Mysteries. Maria prayed with the fervor of a true believer, with the love of a nun for Jesus Christ, and with the despair of a woman who feared for the life of her beloved.
As she was reciting the same words, time and again, the words dropping from her mouth like pearls, Maria’s consciousness dissolved and with it all feelings of despair and loneliness. With every bead she prayed, she moved closer to God.
And then she had a vision.
Except for bad dreams, she had never had a vision; yet she knew immediately what was happening to her. She was shocked and intrigued at the same time, as she continued to pray the beads of the amulet while the images rose and faded.
She saw the hills of Jerusalem under the yellowish haze of a midsummer evening. Sweltering heat bore down on the palace of Herod Antipas, Solomon’s Temple, and Golgotha, the place of the skull. A man in Roman dress was standing on one of the terraces of the palace. The setting sun, smeared red onto the sky, was burning a hole into his head. He was suffering from bad migraines, again, and he was filled with disgust as he looked down on this city that he hated so much but couldn’t escape. His dogs were restless and began to snarl when the guards led in the man they called Jesus of Nazareth, who was said to perform miracles. At Passover, the man had celebrated a triumphant entry into the city to raise the people against the Emperor and the Pharisees. This was, at least, what the indictment said. Pontius Pilate heard the footsteps of the guards and accused behind him and he turned around slowly, very slowly, trying not to further provoke the demon in his head. Through his sore eyes, Maria looked into the beaten and dirty face of the man to whom she had devoted her life. She could see the mortal fear in his eyes. And something else that she could not define. Pontius Pilate wanted to get the matter over with as quickly as possible so that he could return to the cool and protective darkness of his rooms. But as he looked into the face of the man named Jesus, the migraine demon fell off him like a dead crow dropping from a tree, and suddenly he felt light again like the child who had once enjoyed the almond trees in his father’s garden.
Maria would have loved to dwell on the image and get to the bottom of the secret of the man of Nazareth, but the image began to fade and new images began to flash before her eyes, in quick succession. The Pyramids of Giza. The Great Pyramid was still under construction. Thousands of workers moved immense blocks of stone over interior ramps. Then Maria saw a naked man. He was chewing chalk and spitting shapes and symbols onto the walls of a cave. The image disappeared when the man suddenly looked at her, terrified. The moon aligned itself in front of the sun and cut off its light. She saw the dome of the heavens, with the firmament of the stars strung like pearls on an endless knotted thread. Maria stood alone on a high plateau. At her feet, soldiers in suits of armor were racing their horses through a desert of black sand. They were wearing white mantles with the Maltese cross. One of them was holding a small item, hugging it close to his body. But before Maria could tell what the item was, this image faded too and she saw a long line of animals streaming towards a huge wooden ship. Maria saw a city that was being built in the plain between two rivers. She knew the name of this city and she saw it grow and rise and be consumed by fire and hatred until nothing was left but dust and ruins. Not even the memory that it had ever existed. Maria could physically feel the hatred that destroyed this city and she could feel the pain of the thousands upon thousands of people. The pain and the sorrow kept growing and growing, sweeping around the world like a storm. A world of never-ending pain and sorrow. Maria saw ruins in the black desert and she saw a man kill a woman in the most gruesome of ways. And this man was Peter.
Maria was squirming and wailing in front of the bed, but she kept praying, bead by bead. Pearl by pearl, she saw things rise and fall. She saw women giving birth to children who grew under their bosoms into adults, and she saw old people dying. The women cried but they continued to give birth to child after child after child. Pearl by pearl. Maria saw little Grace with a Kalashnikov in her hands. Shooting her parents dead while the men standing around her just laughed. Maria saw her own parents making love. She saw her own beginning. She saw the medieval city of Paris, a dilapidated quarter by the river Seine, and the house of a scribe, and in the house was an alchemical laboratory where a man with a leather cap on his head was trying to fire up an oven. Soldiers stormed his house, ransacked the laboratory, and confiscated his parchments. The only thing they did not find was the book that the man with the leather cap had been able to hide under the floorboards. Maria recognized the symbol of the amulet on the cover. She flew away with the wind and saw an English scholar at the court of Queen Elizabeth I sitting with his assistant at a table engraved with pentagrams and mysterious characters. The two men were muttering words in an incomprehensible language and the characters on the table began to shine. Maria saw the plague victims of Venice and heard their desperate screams. Maria heard so much. She heard the gleeful gurgling of millions and millions of babies. She heard the death throes of millions of people, the cacophony of the last words they stammered as they expired. In a single moan, Maria heard the voices of all the people who had ever walked on the face of this earth. Maria saw a solar eclipse and then she saw the apocalypse in the folios of a medieval artist from Bamberg. She recognized the Seven Bowls of Wrath and she heard the voice of the Whore of Babylon, and it was the voice of a man, whispering obscene and blasphemous things into her ears. Then she saw a cardinal in an airport terminal. He was washing his hands, for his hands were covered with blood. And as the cardinal turned around, Maria could see that his face had the features of the Great Whore, and in his hands he was holding the Seven Bowls of Wrath that would bring misery and devastation to the world. And the number of the Beast was not 666 but 306.
As she was praying bead by bead, Maria saw horrible and mysterious things flash before her eyes. She saw kingdoms and peoples rise and fall. The sun rose and set again, and it all happened at the speed of light. Storms and seasons whirled across the earth; centuries went by in a single breath. Maria saw births and deaths, wars and brief moments of happiness. The only thing that she did not see was God. God was hiding. Or he was simply no longer in the picture of this dreadful chaos.
Maria saw inconceivable things and things that were beyond human comprehension. And behind all this, something was lurking, something abysmally evil that was feeding on the fear and the pain of the world like a parasite on its host, and it became clear to her that this nameless parasite would suck out the world, voraciously and recklessly, leaving its dried-up remains to the great oblivion.
Down to the last pearl. There was no God to put a stop to it. No hope.
Maria’s heart was aching so badly that she cried as she prayed the last bead of the necklace. And when she opened her mouth to say the »Salve Regina,« there was suddenly a voice speaking to her, soft and reassuring like a beloved memory.
»Have no fear, Maria.«
Maria lifted her head and saw the Holy Virgin. She was standing in front of her by the window, beautiful and surrounded by a dazzling glow, draped in a plain gray robe and a veil. The Holy Virgin stretched out her hand towards her.
»What are you afraid of?«
»I am afraid of the pain and suffering that I saw,« Maria whispered. »Of the evil.«
»Have no fear. You need to have faith. The pain and the evil are just the world exhaling. They are an essential part of life.«
»It will destroy us all,« Maria cried. »Where is God?«
»God is the inhaling, Maria. You cannot search for Him. God wants to be found. Like you. You need to inhale and exhale. You need to believe. Have no fear.«
> »But I do have fear,« Maria screamed out in despair. »I am terribly frightened!«
Maria felt the hand of the Holy Mother of God touching her gently, stroking her hair.
»Have no fear, Maria. Be strong. Breathe. Live. Find.«
The Holy Virgin bestowed a last smile upon her, and then she left Maria kneeling in front of her bed, crying and desperate. It took Maria a while to come back to herself and when she did she saw that the sun was still shining outside. In front of the little hotel, a car horn was honking. There was the ringing laugh of a woman. A dog was barking. Someone was shouting something in French. An amiable and clueless world.
Maria looked at the alarm clock next to her bed. Less than an hour had passed. With the survival instinct of someone who was drowning, Maria clutched the edge of her bed and struggled to her feet. After drinking a whole bottle of water, she began to feel a little bit better. She was still holding the amulet in her hands. Now she knew what it was capable of and she knew what she had to do.
Breathe. Live. Find.
But more than anything else, she had to get out of this room. Immediately. Because there was one thing that she suddenly knew. With the certainty of an animal that can sense a firestorm long before the first smoke becomes visible, she knew that she would be in the greatest of danger if she stayed. For death was already on his way to get her.
EPISODE 8
SETH
Lübbe Webnovel is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG
Copyright © 2011 by Bastei Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany
Written by Mario Giordano, Cologne
Translated by Diana Beate Hellmann, Los Angeles
English version edited by Charlotte Ryland, London
Editors: Friederike Achilles/Jan F. Wielpütz
Apocalypsis I Page 31
