CHAPTER 2
GERMANY
THAT SAME DAY
At one of the most sophisticated neighbourhoods of Berlin lied inside a great mansion whose owners had never been seen, a benighted sanctuary long forgotten by everybody where thirteen people surrounded a pregnant woman and a man that could feel flattered if instead of old, he was called ancient. Ancientness is associated with wisdom and value whilst oldness is just the opposite of youngness. His looks resembled the nightmarish prototypical Devil, not the one from the bible who had been an angel in the past, the one everybody is so afraid of meeting in Hell, a creature with red skin and horns, square shaped nose, filthy mouth and animalised body. It’s incredible how an idea can grow inside people.
Where did people invent this traits from? Is it from the Bible? It does say that he was cast out but it says nothing about being turned into a monster. Perhaps everybody who goes to Hell, if there is such thing, is turned into serpents since it is the only recorded creature Lucifer is associated to. Sometimes it does seem like people are describing a red bull, however, beliefs are dogmas and the peaceful Indus are capable of slaughtering anyone who dares to make such cheap analogy towards their saint Taurean Gods.
Sometimes, the, funnily enough, the maxim of dogmatism being incontestable to some extent makes it, logically, inevitably illogical.
At some point in the ancient past that the building certainly belonged, it had been a Roman Catholic Church. If it wasn’t almost impossible to locate, it could be a massive religious tourism paradise. Its walls had ornate stone carvings, paintings of falling angels, shapeless figures of horrifying monstrosities like Picasso’s, only worse. There hanged skulls of men, women and smaller men and women that lived a rather short life whilst their body remains compulsorily adopted a centenary lifespan.
The man’s visage haunted even the best autistic ever to walk the face of Earth. The years hadn’t been generous to him. He had the eyes of wisdom like an owl but also its infamy of being a creature of evil. He undoubtedly topped the list of immediate targets of the angel of Death. He was so old one could have a hard time finding out who was older, him or the Church. Unlike everybody else, his face wasn’t covered at all. Actually, his face simply wasn’t. His bones could be seen and his nose resembled that of the skulls hanging in every centimetre of the building. He wore long dark clothes, like a black lacerated cursed wedding dress, the kind that even the wicked witches could find scary.
It was nearly impossible to assert with exactitude whether there were men or women behind those vestments. Terrifying masks covered the members’ faces and their dresses had hoods covering all their hair, ears and faces. Even without the masques, seeing their faces could be like trying to see the face of a headless horse, a worthless deed.
The wise sorcerer kept speaking in a language long forgotten even the Latians could consider it archaic. Between now and then he would utter ‘Lucifer est Dominus. Nostra anima est tua. Venit accipe ’. The expressions were unknown to everybody but the infinite past repetitions of that ritual gave them a thoroughly perceived meaning no translator could succeed to convey.
The woman’s garments weren’t much different, only in a different colour, very shiny white. Her face was covered like the other members of the cult but didn’t cover her lower parts. She had her legs apart, lying on a very ancient rectangular tombstone with both her legs and arms tied to four round objects at the vertices.
The sorcerer took a round calix made of wood and gave it to the woman. He demanded her to drink it all and he repeated ‘Accipere Lucifer’ several times in a clear invocation of the Devil. He continued the satanic cult and a few repetitions later, the woman started to have unsettling convulsions and her belly, as if turned inside out, started to make strange shapes and figures of infernal faces, hands and a protuberance that like a sharped knife carved pentagonal projections inside of her stomach. The woman’s sufferings were impossible to look at, agonistic and unbearably monstrous. She had waited 9 joyous months for that moment. She wanted to bear that child infinite times more than the baby. It decided to leave the warmth and comfort of his mother's womb if expelled forcefully, perhaps because he was aware of the terror out here.
Those few minutes made her reconsider every choices that allowed her to inevitably find herself in that situation, even the pleasurable ones. It wasn’t a usual childbirth. She felt a portion of her soul leave her body each time she pushed the baby out. When she perceived that she needed only one push to finally become a mother, her strength was nowhere to be found. She was left with two dilemmatic pseudo-choices, to keep pushing out that creature inside her and fatalistically expel out the last shade of life within herself or she simply stop pushing, killing the child, and ultimately herself. Both options ended with her death but in one, the baby lived and in the other, both died. Like any mother, from the mentally stable ones, she decided for the former.
The Devil’s priest continued invoking Lucifer and after one last push that could cost the woman’s life, the babe started to come out. When the babe cried, she fainted instantly. Her blood drained from her body and the skin assumed a white pale tone, one as a dead corpse. The sorcerer held the baby on his long, pointy fingered hands.
When the baby was born, it cried endlessly but now, it bizarrely made no sound. He put it on display to everybody heading to the altar. The altar had satanic symbols painted in dense red blood surrounding an artistic creation of Lucifer when heaven banished him and he fell into hell. Next to the painting rested a big bowl, so perfect in size to put a baby that one had no other option but to conclude that it was custom-made solely for that purpose. Inside of it, a gold coloured liquid. The old man started speaking in superannuated Latin, as translated,
“If the boy’s blood to you belongs,
As gold will the liquid remain
If the boy does not
His blood will be as putrid stain,”
He took a huge shaped knife and surgically cut the boy in-between the chest, enough to make the enormous knife stay with some blood but not to do any physical damage. It showed indeed a master surgical cut since any tiny mistake could cost the baby’s life. Like any craft, continuous repetition, hopefully not trial and error in his case, had made him flawless. He took the knife with some blood spouting from it and introduced it on the golden liquid. If the liquid inside the bowl turned red, the boy was to be killed instantly but if it remained gold coloured, their God, the Devil, had plans for him and therefore, he was worth living. Everybody awaited to see the boys final destination. The Sorcerer took out the Knife, completely clean and shiny. The liquid remained golden and the boy would live.
One of the 13 members entered the altar, knelled down in relief and obeisance and opened his hands to receive the baby. The sorcerer put the baby in his hands and he welcomed it into his fathering arms. As he did that, the baby resumed crying again proving that a baby cries because knows that one cares.
Two men came and took the lady and put her on a stretcher. As the man holding the baby followed them, one of them stopped and said, “Go home sir, we will take care of your wife. We are both highly skilled physicians.”
Although the so called physicians also had a white uniform as his wife’s and had their faces covered, the husband noticed the warmth and politeness of the man. He also detected by the stature and delicacy of the other physician, that she was a lady medico so he nodded and removed himself. He observed them distancing themselves from him, he observed and saw the woman complaining at the man. The way they gazed at each other, the way they argued, turned to be too very intimate and he assured himself that he stood beside spouses.
The members started to leave and the freshly made father stayed there, wondering if things had gone wrong, if he had lost his wife, what would he have done? She symbolised the only tiny beam of light in his dark life and she was enough to keep his hope that at least there was a light after all. He had gone pass the p
hase of the blinded man in Plato’s cave, he cognised a better world than the one he lived in but to him, it seemed unreachable since he was borne inside the cave and grew inside the cave. In those minutes he felt as if he had already lost his wife and upon his first child, he thought about life more than he had ever done. If his parents gave him no other choice but to dwell into demoniac worshipping and eternal imprisonment, he was going to try and be a better father and his son was going to live life to its fullest potential. What was all that money he had for? To keep making more money so that his son could grow up and also keep making more money and etcetera? That meant every man in his family was doomed to do the very same thing, make more money. An idea solidified adamantly and so imbedded into all of them that they believed no other option existed and nothing mattered the most in the world.
While he was lost inside his mind, the baby stopped crying. He looked at him and said, “You will be the first man to be free in the family for centuries. I promise.” The babe laughed as if it understood him.
The ceremony was bound to happen twice for every man who belonged to the 13 families, members of the 13 most powerful bloodlines in the world. First, when the boy is born and second, when he turns 18, the age when he starts to be prepared to replace his father once this eventually dies. Some would pass the first test but would fail the second. The opposite was obviously practically impossible. Women weren’t necessarily part of the 13 members but at birth, few baby girls were chosen by Lucifer for higher purposes and some, only a handful supersede their fathers but only if there is not a man alive.
Five hours later his wife arrived home. She was quite healthy for a person who just died. He had the baby on his hands and a long smile on his face. She deduced two things. One explained the relieved smile, deduced into a genuine satisfaction of seeing her alive. The other evidenced the only thing that could explain him still having the baby in his arms, it was a baby boy. He gave the baby to her and hugged her like he had never done before.
“I love you,” He said.
She felt appreciated for the first time in years. If she had to go through that process to have that attention and love, she certainly would. It was priceless. He resumed, “Have you picked a name yet?”
“But it’s a boy,” as if saying that it mattered him the most, not her.
“I know, but I don’t know much about names. What about Hitler?” He trusted she expected a baby girl so he tried to cheer her.
“What? No!”
“See, you have got pick it yourself. I am sure you couldn’t help it but to find a name for him so let’s hear it?
“Gabriel, I picked Gabriel.”
“Then the brother of Lucifer it is!”
“What? No! I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry. I kind of like the idea. For the simply pleasure of being against!”
“Against what? The cult?”
“No, just against!”
From that day on, the family was never the same again. When partners start finding out that they have nothing in common besides sexual attraction, and when this same sexual attraction stops being the epicentre of a relationship, only a child can bring the next best thing, the unconditional and infinite love for the same thing, therefore, the only thing in common any partners need. From that point on, two persons tie a bond bigger than blood, the bond of fatherhood and motherhood. Wherever one goes, no matter how far it is, one always comes back for his/her child. If one dies, comes as an angel like the Christians and the Muslims believe or as a protective spirit to Africans. Which one is right and which one is a fool doesn’t matter, all that matters is that all believe no one really ever dies and there is something genuinely beautiful in that.
After 18 years, the boy’s fate would be told decidedly and death could be the verdict.