The Fourth Circle (13 page)

Perceiving my sinful error of doubting that supreme harmony that Heaven grants as a faultless example to us all, I started again to go humbly down on my knees, however hard this modest courtesy was for me. The dampness of the iguman's cellar was already biting into my old man's bones to which the blessed warmth of the summer sun would have been far more pleasing. But before my knees touched the earthen floor, a new thought, even more wayward than the previous one, passed through my faithless head, as if the Unclean One himself now dwelt there to stir it up with his monstrous heresies. All things wrought by the Lord must needs shine with His infinite wisdom; therefore His judgments cannot be revoked, above all His supreme judgment of calling someone to Himself. Did He not return even Lazar to the dead soon after His son had raised him, his second sojourn among the living having but that single purpose of sustaining the immense power of Hrist's righteous faith?

Would this raising of the Master then be just as brief because it served another purpose, however justified? Or had perhaps the Almighty, may He forgive me, altered His earlier decision, for reasons beyond my ken, perceiving after all that He had called my Master, steeped in sin, prematurely to the Final Judgment?

So the mighty joy that I had just felt because of his return from the kingdom of the dead was replaced by new alarm. If the Master's resurrection were to be brief,
I must prepare again to grieve over his second death. But this thought I could not endure, having wrestled with the many woes that had befallen my miserable self in just one day.

And if the Master's second life was the result of a sudden change of mind on the part of the Almighty, then a blasphemous suspicion must needs be sown in me, contrary to my soul's boundless faith in the perfect harmony that graces the Courts of Heaven. For if even the Almighty can make imperfect decisions, though He later amend them by the use of His divine powers, in what steadfast citadel can we miserable creatures trust?

Perplexed by these twofold thoughts that so swiftly dispelled my spirit's new-found joy, my poor knees at last reached the cold floor, and I shivered with the icy chill that crept thence up into my decrepit body. Since I could reach no understanding by my own scanty wits, I felt that the virtue of patience would serve me best, for surely the reason for the Master's miraculous resurrection would become apparent within the next few moments.

And truly, events began immediately to happen, but such that I, though prepared for all marvels, could not have imagined even had I the perverse imagination of Sotona himself, who invents the blackest punishments of Hell.

My Master rose from his insensibility into a sitting position before Marya, but not in a manner humble and restrained as one should be before the Mother of God, but with light, agile movements as if he had not lain for hours on damp, cold planks. Everything about him was tense and swollen, as if he were a man prepared for battle, or—as my experience from long-gone times told me—a lad who expects soon to encounter his beloved. His gaze withal seemed to burn with the same heat of lust, although directed at the woman who, among all others, should least kindle such desire in men, for even the Lord did not endanger her chastity when He filled her with the gift of His only Son.

I thought at first that all this must be a delusion, that the heat of Marya's hands, ablaze until a few moments ago with a white flame, must have lingered in my eyes so that now, in the feeble light of our almost burnt-out candle I did not see what was truly there but what my sinful mind produced from its darkest corners. But these doubts, which for a moment filled me with great shame and caused a blush under the gray, bristling beard on my withered cheeks, disappeared the next moment when Marya moved likewise, swiftly bringing her outstretched hands back to her thin neck, where lay the cord that held the robe about her body.

I did not see the motion because she stood with her back turned to me, but quick, skillful, and experienced it must have been when, in an instant, the robe
slid with a slight rustle down to the earthen floor and pooled around her bare feet. The bareness of her feet was not all that I saw in that moment before I thought to cover my eyes with my hands so as not to lose my mind completely before that impossible sight.

I did not raise my hands or close my eyes but stared unblinkingly, lasciviously, at her complete exposure, ready at that moment to repent, since punishment most dire must surely follow such sacrilege. I even felt a sudden defiance against that part of my two-faced soul that called in a weak, unconvincing voice for modesty and the fear of God, as if the Unclean One had split me into two and taken full control over half my spirit—the half that was much stronger than the other, unconquered half.

The naked Marya, her glorious body capable even without Divine intervention of raising the dead from the grave, stood for a few moments motionless, caring not a whit that I directed my blasphemous gaze at her back (sculpted, as I saw, with utter artistry). Even less was she troubled by the other pair of eyes, those of the Master, newly awakened from eternal sleep and shown yet more secrets, of beauty inviolate, calamitous but magnificent. For his eyes only—that much I understood at once—did she commit this act, at once unforgivable and sublime, an act that even Sotona himself could not have invented. I was someone who, for these two, simply was not there, incorporeal as the murky air, blind as the damp stone walls.

Marya's hands, wondrously white even in the thickening gloom—for our only candle was all but burnt down—rose once again, not to shine with the light of divine resurrection but in another movement, which I, a sinner, recognized at once, although for a few moments my storm-tossed soul refused to accept it. Then the Master took her outstretched hands and stood up from his now superfluous deathbed, standing in his poor linen shroud before Marya's nakedness, brimming over with life, and there was no further doubt.

This was total disharmony—the symbols of sullen death and of life's supreme delight, a contrast too great to last: not even a lump of ice fashioned by winter's hardest frost can long endure the heat of the spring sun whose irresistible call lures forth the sleepy shoots from the bosom of the earth. Yet it was not the Master himself who threw off the shroud but Marya herself, with a movement I found skilled without being lewd (though maybe I no longer wished to see aught that was blasphemous in her appearance or actions).

Prepared now to look at Marya as being beyond sin—for what can be sinful about the very marrow of life, which is the most faithful reflection of the Lord?—I was overcome by a sudden timidity before that which had to follow, now that the
Master and Marya stood naked before each other. Although for them I did not exist, unseeing as the surrounding darkness, unhearing as the still of the night, I was still present to myself, an unwilling witness to the one deed that tolerates no witnesses. Though was I really so unwilling?

I had no time to grapple with this unquiet thought, for Providence itself came to my aid. The single candle, which I had placed at the head of what had been the Master's deathbed, reached the end of its waxen road, hissing as the wick touched the bottom of the bronze candlestick, and—just before it went out completely—flaring up briefly as it does when it is first lit, just as often happens with men, who experience final lucidity at the moment of death.

In this ultimate brightness, which lasted but the twinkling of an eye, Marya and the Master appeared to be crowned with the haloes of the saints and I, up from my knees and thoroughly exultant, had the impression that the Lord himself, in His infinite mercy, was granting them His pardon, though they stood on the threshold of the greatest sin.

Then all sank into darkness.

6. THE PURCHASE OF A SOUL

SURELY HE WILL come for my soul?

Would he dismiss the prey that offers itself to him, cancel the contract that we have sealed in blood? Yes, but that was before he discovered what I was asking in return. He had no notion what it would be. He thought I was no different from the mindless multitudes with whom he has made such pacts from time immemorial, easily satisfying their trivial desire to spend life in one long ecstasy and afterwards—come what may.

The expression that appeared on his face when I told him what I wanted in exchange for my soul! It seemed to me that were he not what he is, he would have had an apoplectic fit. He reddened as if he would burst, began to pant, then, foaming at the mouth, murmured something in Latin or one of those ancient tongues from the dawn of time. He jumped from the table where we sat, this very table in this dockside tavern in the Hague full of fat whores and seaport rabble where our first meeting took place. I await him in the same place now. I trust that he is, after all, a person of honor who will have the courtesy to fulfill his obligations, whatever trouble they cause him, but who knows? With his kind one is never sure.

He rushed outside, but I did not hurry after him, judging it unwise to let it be seen that my desire matched his own—was greater, in fact, because he had around him an abundance of other blundering souls, only too delighted to have anyone bid for them, while I could obtain what I wanted from him alone. He returned several minutes later, seemingly a little more composed, though droplets of sweat appeared under his graying sidelocks and slid down his sinewy neck. He informed me that he must reflect, the demand was extremely unusual, he had to seek advice in certain places, but we would see each other again in this tavern in exactly seven days, when he would tell me his decision, although the contract was already signed, but still...Then he hurried away, energetically casting his long crimson-lined cape about him and roughly pushing aside the innkeeper, who was bearing a large tray with six or seven tankards of sour beer to the tipsily singing occupants of the next table.

The drink and tankards spilled over the guests, drunk for the most part, and like lightning a brawl erupted, as happens often in these dockside taverns. I did not wait to see the outcome, as I might have done on some other occasion, but
hurried out without first settling my account, since in the general melee there was nobody available to pay. I did not care where he had gone, merely wishing to be in the fresh air as soon as possible and to recover my breath somewhat.

I had thought I would never have the courage to seek that from him, fearing he would not agree at all, or would perceive what store I set by it and then demand something more than my soul, something that I perhaps would not be willing to part with at any price. However, none of this occurred: contrary to all my expectations, he became quite confused, clearly confronted with something he had obviously not taken into account. It was not an easy time for him, I knew, and the seven days he had for collecting himself would pass differently for us: too fast for him, too slow for me.

The long week nonetheless elapsed—and here I am again in the now half-empty tavern on the shore, having yielded to my impatience and arrived somewhat ahead of time while it is still daylight, before the noisy nightly gathering of loose women and vicious blackguards, gathered here from all quarters of the world, when the malodorous vapors mixed with the pungent smell of cheap tobacco and bad liquor will convert the little fresh sea air that penetrates here into stink and pestilence.

People of my rank seldom or never enter here, not only because they do not feel at ease but also because they are conspicuous in a tavern of this sort, easy prey for pickpockets and robbers. Those of my sort who do come here are fortunate to lose only their money or ornaments of precious metals and stones and not their lives, as when morning finds their bodies floating bloated in the filthy water under the pier.

It is just as fatal, although somewhat deferred—if this be any comfort—to frequent the local wenches because the ailments they bequeath, having arrived here from distant, alien shores and even from the New World as God's punishment for the lost innocence of our age (as many puritans believe), often lead to a festering agony that ultimately attacks the brain itself.

What then could tempt me, a respected court mathematician, a man of good family and high position, into this infamous quarter? The possibilities are limited: perversion or desperation. I maintain that I am not perverted, but who among the perverted would openly admit to being so? In fact, however, all that has fallen to my lot could only be called perversion, of an extreme kind at that.

Desperation, then. Utter hopelessness, into which only a mind quite unequal to the vain struggle with the greatest of all problems could fall; a desperation derived from seeing that I would arrive at a solution only by special dispensation from God, or by a pact with the devil. But by what virtues or deeds have I earned
the Lord's special favor? Have I not in my arrogant greed to grasp at any cost the greatest of His secrets, hidden even from many of the saints, demonstrated that I am moved by sheer pride and vanity, and not by the absolute humility and lowliness that alone might lead to fulfillment of my intent? Besides, could not God, being omnipotent, easily have foreseen that I would not shrink from a conspiracy with Satan and turn my fickle back on Him, as soon as my trust in His grace proved barren?

In fact I had no choice at all. When I became mired at the thirty-sixth decimal place, without any hope of advancing further on my own strength but consumed with the conviction that the subsequent progression, beyond my reach, hid insights that the great seers of ancient times at the height of their powers only dimly descried, clearly I saw what I had to do to satisfy the greatest longing of my life.