versione italiana
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ANTROPOECCENTRICO by Gianni Actis Barone
published by Edizioni dell’Ortica Communication - Bologna Italy 1998

The novel, presented in Italy by philosophers, book critics and semeiologists, is being translated into English and Spanish.


In this novel/roman noir/phylosophique, the narrative tissue tends, in my opinion, to tear, melt, unglue, but the thoughtful substance, however, spreadsat the base a well-articulated, intertwined support that allows movement butdoes not grant, does not admit the internal, final laceration. This wavelikemovement, akin to a ship trapped in a stormy sea, could at first produce animpression of being lost, so much we are immersed - we feel immersed - in suchopposite tensions. As we proceed, however, the ever more compact articulation -as I mentioned - and the reader's adapting to this, if only apparent, beinglost, grant placement in the correct path of understanding, and of satisfaction. Because clearly the text is not disappointing, we do not feel deprived at all. Nonetheless, how are the two levels of narrative tied together, being apparentlyso divergent and opposite? I can give my personal answer: by a thoughtfulexpression strongly aggressive and well placed inside the fundamental questionsof our time; and by a real story, a police novel that seems old-fashioned but isillustrated, accompanied, and finally resolved by cleverly pursued and nurturedirony. In short, on one side the proclamations of the Red Pontiff of Climax tothe Nation - which are inserted without caution, indeed with bullying, into theplot of the mystery; on the other, the characters of this adventure, impetuouslyseasoned with a dazzling darkness, and spangled with minute, even marginalepisodes. And the whole placed inside unity of time and action: a moving train- then stopped, then started again - and three or four days in a generic season,without wind, however, or snow. There is nothing gruff or excessive withinthese pages; rather an extremely useful dryness that does not avoid, however,the concession of precise explanations in writing. "The (train) aisle was dark. Darker than when she had entered. A watered-down dark, inclined to pallor. Gloomy, however. And cold, the already spring-like morning air notwithstanding. A very resourceful dark. Still laden with the remnants of the night" (page32).This to exemplify the description of an interior. I have another example, foran exterior (Page 34)"Relena...water"About the flesh-and-blood characters, the dramatis personae within the narrativethread, one can say that each one is there, fixed as a butterfly pinned underglass. Therefore it is not an easy piece of work, this that we have under oureyes; nor is it a work allowing or tolerating just pleasure (albeit sour)reading; for it always requires concentration without digressions. For example,each sentence of the four or five proclamations of the "Red Pontiff" requires apause, an emphasis, a break for comparison, for remembering and verifying ideas. I quote an example from a very brimming sentence: "soul is in the senses",given not as a rigorous lemma, but as a determinant opening, deriving from acomplicated general ongoing meditation. On page 63: "The problems of youths, oflabor, of overpopulation, must be solved not by control of birth, but byacceleration of death." And on page 68: "The only explanation is that Christwas a man from the future. A time traveler".More examples could be added, but I believe I have given, from my point of view,a path to walk through the pages. In addition, one cannot complete this mapwithout at least the introduction of the various characters directly involved;characters with a literary charm, who seem to be dense, sometimes terrifying,ghosts rather than real men and women; something to be seen more than to betouched. Blood, because of direct violence, flows freely in here, but after allit seems to dry out quickly, to disappear without much trace, while the minutestvisual actions of the characters remain prominent, their gloomy search fordeath, or for the violence of death, manages life. Towards the ending, thestory, or the "account", of this insane carnage tends to crumble into anambiguity shiny as fog. The meaning of actions, the faces, the people's handsseem to vanish, to move out of range, to be in the center no more. And theending of the book could - just perhaps, I say - rejoin the beginning to startyet another story. Within a landscape that seems drawn out in time, more fromthe Third than the nearer Second Millennium, therefore impending like awholeness already culturally acknowledged and accepted. That white gray, almostdevoid of colors, that likens the earnest day more to a systematic hallucinationthan to a still confrontational, not yet resigned exasperation. The potency ofthe tale lies also in calling us to the urgent scrutiny of our reason.
Roberto Roversi

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CHAPTER ONE
Relena's on the train and the train's on the grass. Beyond the grass is the city. Beyond the city, boundless wheat fields. Then other cities. Then the sea. And beyond the sea there are more cities. Because the earth is round, and one always comes back to where one started.
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UNCHAPTER ONE
Proclamation by the Red Pontiff of Climax to the Nation
(The proclamation is posted on the subway, on city trains, in the stations, on trains, at bus stops, on the buses, in the important art galleries, on pop paintings, on the phosphorescent posters of conceptual art, and, generally, in any other place of vital exhaustion, including public toilets, stadiums, and beach vacations).
Friends and brothers (compagnons, countrymen, amigos), the Capital is not Toyland. Here the concrete has a soul, and a soul is more binding than concrete. It is useless to explain to you that this sentence has no meaning. But just because it has no meaning I tell you: to show you how loyal your Pontiff is, and how simply he faces the complexities of life in the Capital.
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CHAPTER TWO
It cannot be denied that the Chief, once, was a meek man. Once, the Chief was a young man with a sound head. He went to the movies every Sunday. He was a good student (a vocational school for machinists and boilermen, which turned out to be very useful in his job as a burglar).
Rumor has it that he respected all girls. He respected them lovingly. All of them. Even the biggest sluts. In fact, at the time, nobody called him "Chief".
At that time, the Chief read love poems. He read Byron. He shivered for lines by Lorca. At night, also, he looked at the stars and dreamed who knows what. But he always dreamed it respectfully.
How he changed, nobody can say. If anybody can say, we don't know him.
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SUB-CHAPTER: THE CHINAMAN
The Chinaman is the oldest accomplice. He doesn’t speak Chinese because, when he was seven, he was kidnapped by a pair of Burmese (father and son) who needed someone to work in the fields. Because the Chinaman is like this: after a year, he cannot remember what he did, what he knew before.
When he was eight, he couldn’t remember having been a child. He thought he was a grown-up who hadn’t grown. Because grown-ups grow up to a certain point, and when they think they grew too much, they begin to age. So, because of this arrogance of theirs, the pay the price of death.
However, the Chinaman had known very few old people. In the fields near Rangoon, in the Sumatran and Malaysian savannahs, in the Sarawak jungles, one can die of anything, even of boredom. Sometimes one can die of homesickness. Bun never of old age.
The old people of Nantuna (famous only because they are old) who taught him to fish (skill which the Chinaman forgot the year following his new skill), always had a cause for dying. Some because of their heart, some because of a cerebral hemorrage, some for kidney failure. They gasped for air. Three or four times, with staring eyes, frothing mouth. That was it.
But because of old age, like saying: ‘he died of old age’, nobody.
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SUB-CHAPTER: THE SADIST
The sadist wasn’t like this from birth. He wasn’t institutionalized, he didn’t cry in the arms of a consoling priest.
And yet, something put in his head an evil view of life.
Just like some troubled souls, souls who crowd the world (or crowded it), the sadist doesn’t believe in God. Nonetheless, when he thinks his life is in danger, then he prays.
Let this God of the Christians show his mercy. Not like the God of the Jews, who blinds for seven generations, who transforms Gomorrahs into salt and flames, who never forgives anyone, not even women (who, as women, don’t need to thank him in the morning). This God full of possibilities, sly as a fox, who can save you on the day of your death and can save you on Judgment Day.
This learned God, who read Plato. Sophisticated as the last of the evangelists can be. Shrewd connoisseur of conscience. Psychologist. Improver. Antistalinist. This God trebling and ubiquitous. Manager of the big bang.
Not human enough to be a God.
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SUB-CHAPTER: THE DOCTOR
The doctor, expelled from the Association, weak and drunk, small and square, constipated.
The reason why he happened into the group is because a bunch of rabble, without a doctor, is not complete. So much so that his former bunch had to get another doctor.
That group was once called ‘the Hospital of Mercy’.
And the doctor, who at the beginning of that situation would have accepted anything just to be able to help the sick, ended up cynical and ironic, a jokester, about death and burial.
He adopted an out-of-focus air. A non-air air. The air of any doctor. The air of every doctor.
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CHAPTER THREE
(Cassette tape recorded and given to Relena Atridea two days before the train departure).
- Professor Mendel was a son of a bitch.
One evening (when was it? Two months ago, maybe) he told me: "I made the contra-contraceptive".
I thought he wasdrunk because, among other things, what would be the use of a contra-contraceptive? I told Paulus, a colleague in the group. He laughed a great deal. He said: "Professor Mendel would lie even to his dog". To his dog, he said. Which is to say a lot.
It took us a month to figure out how he did it. And when we figured it out, I swear to God I thought I was dreaming. A world full of bellies. A world full of pregnant women despite themselves.
"God loves children" they hear chanting "God loves children". It is Mendel, who loves children. Mendel and his conceptional molecules. One drop is all it takes. Spilled into the city water supply. One drop for fifty years of continuous pregnancy. Millions of Archangel Gabriel announcing the birth of unexpected children. All mixed up, the children. Mixed up following the direction of the wind.
Now I hear somebody cackle (wasn't it Paulus who said it?): "My dear friend, you forget that ours is an organized civilization. I agree, all these children may fill our ears. However, there is a way to get rid of them. There is abortion. Abortion will solve the problem. We will scrape uteri and throw fetuses in the garbage. Mendel's very own, we'll throw in the garbage. And while we are at it, we'll throw Mendel himself in the garbage.
Unless you want to muse over conscience. In that case then I'll have to remind you that conscience doesn't exist, when necessary".
Now, Relena had to hide the vial and the tape.
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CHAPTER FOUR
"Women are all the same," the murderer was thinking, while dragging Relena into a compartment.
A sorceress (the murderer never did anything without first seeking the advice of cards) predicted that with this mission he, Vestigo Inani, would become part of History. A solemn part, it seemed, and lasting.
Relena purposefully looked out of the window.
The valley, green and cultivated, sowed, and in parts covered with trees, extended for tens of kilometers without interruption by a hill or a rough, stony mountain. Thick clouds of industrial black (most beautiful) appeared suddenly, diving like eagles on the lazy flowing water. In those areas the air smelled of iron filings, and burnt motor oil, and anhydride mixed with anhydride (a vibrant song in the middle of that defined form muddily drowning in the sky).
- That vial contains a message - Relena started saying - You can't destroy it. - Who wants to destroy it? - said Vestigo Inani - I don't even know what it contains, that vial...
Vestigo Inani twisted his lips again. His experience taught him that, generally, pain takes away the desire to lie. Dozens of heroes bartered torture with death, because no secret is worth a torn fingernail. Maybe the heart, the heart only, could be worth a secret. The heart and all the rest with it.
However, by habit, he was never willing to believe before the third assurance. Because he was aware that in this world stubborn people exist. People who always hope in the last instant. People who expect the world to change suddenly. Ferocious opportunists, who even believe that ideals stand above money. For this reason, he let go a second blow against Relena's nose. Not a merciless punch, like the one before, but a short punch, almost friendly. A last word of warning.
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UNCHAPTER TWO
Proclamation of the Red Pontiff of Climax to the Nation.
Dear friends, dear brothers. Fellow nationals, fellow internationals. I'm not sure whether Paris is worth a Mass. I don't know "what is man more than beast, if he uses his time no better than for eating and sleeping". All told, what is man more than beast? I don't know.
Man was conceived by God's mind, they say. And family was conceived by man's mind.
Danae, while she sleeps, so rolled up, so strongly open, receives in the tree of life Jupiter's golden rain. And an umbrella isn't necessary, to protect oneself from that rain. Nor is it necessary to run. Just remain still. Still and rolled up like Danae.
Because it is rain that wets only the inside, that one is. It penetrates straight, down to the hem, and lets the rest fall, liquid and worthless.
This is how families are born. And with the same method societies are born.
Once, a long time ago, much before God was born, even before the birth of farming and assembly-line civilizations, when man still grunted and wasn't aware of being a person (because there wasn't a way of letting him know), at the time corresponding, more or less, to the time of Eden, man wandered around without a fixed destination, ate what he happened upon, and spent the rest of the time scratching his lice. On the days of love (about the fourteenth day of the moon cycle), all over plains and mountains, not knowing a thing about hormones, man humped anything in sight in a one-kilometer radius. Sheep and horse. Man and woman. Woman and child. Man didn't know he was sinning, so he enjoyed himself without regrets. It took hundreds of thousands of years to make him understand the difference. All sorts of things had to be invented, even culture. And today, we see the result under our eyes, with all the problems that denial of origins implies.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Obviously, if one takes everything literally, one risks total paralysis. Friendship is not the same for everybody. There are no rules of behavior. Strict. Betrayal is part of friendship, when the survival instinct doesn't give way to anything. Not even to heroism. Survival instinct is a large ocean, impenetrable, as deep as humankind. It could mean a new suit for someone, for someone else a pure white toga. And both, maybe, will see it as a moral dilemma. My God! So many little Robespierres ready with the guillotine "But you won't see any, believe you me, you won't see one". Then, it is a fact that so much need for cleanliness leads to believe that one is dirty. That everybody is dirty.
- I talk about friendship, and he thinks I'm talking to a friend. I speak to a friend, and he thinks I'm speaking about friendship. The concept of a perfect tongue is idiocy, believe me. What we need is a language generic to the highest degree. A language unharmed by synonyms. A guttural-consonant language. Homophonic. Slave to glances and fingers. In short, a language for which the mouth wouldn't be of much use.

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CHAPTER SIX
In the police records the inquisitor made a note of his deep sadness for the doctor's untimely death. His tears fell on photosensitive paper, reproducing tiny tearlets that evaporated in brittle air bubbles. Chemistry.
Afterwards, he concentrated on the official report. At first he wrote that the doctor died in unknown circumstances. So much so that a homicide was feared. Or a perfect suicide. And in this case it was necessary to find sound justifications, since the doctor himself didn't kindly leave a message.
It so happens, the inquisitor wrote, that some semi-illiterate fellow kills himself and leaves pages of forgiveness (although the semi-illiterate seldom kill themselves, noted the inquisitor). They are pitiful pages, or rather, worthy of pity, full of wishes and farewells.
And it so happens, the inquisitor wrote, that as the level of culture increases, the letters become leaner and more essential (a parable in the form of a question mark, straight to the heart of the reader. A recommendation. A mute sarcasm made of terse and precise allusions).
So, the suicide of a man of culture is even so the suicide of a man of culture. Cold, maybe. And rational, under certain aspects. A suicide that considers wealth more than it does money. Shame more than honor. That doesn't mend, but erases. The fastest and most painless. A suicide for which one asks that comments not be made. Because the man of culture knows that comments will be made. And since he is so very solicitous, he is afraid that someone may suffer because of them.

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UNCHAPTER THREE
Proclamation of the Red Pontiff of Climax to the Nation
(The Proclamation is found between the lines of unwritten words. Therefore it isn't so important to know where it is written/it is not written, as it is to recognize its efficacy between the lines).
Friends and enemies (enemies, mainly), blessed be the mutable man. He who everyday changes opinion and, after changing opinion, acts as if he never changed it. What we are dealing with today (what we are dealing with always) is reality. And nothing in reality is so important that it gives me the idea that I could do without it.
The first reality man faces is work.
Man is a machine, as you all know. And like all machines he uses energy. Like all machines he needs repairing. Like all machines he loses value. However, different from machines, man can choose. With the benefit of increasing his own value. And the risk of losing it completely: in this respect machines are luckier, even though they don't know it.

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SUBCHAPTER: NOTE ON TOP OF THE PAGE
One of the most daring demonstrations of how much nature is bridled by technology, of how much nature is the archetype of technology, and actually how much nature cedes with docility to technology, was given in 1960 by the heretic (honorary) theologian Luthor Spinoza.
"Miracles, though, miracles above all, are the cause of very angry debates. People don't want to believe in phenomena that are simply technology for the contemporary man: surgical technology, medical technology, scientific technology.
But if we think that Christ was a being, the Being, endowed with supernatural powers as the Creator of the Universe, then we should also ask ourselves why he didn't interfere not only with his own death, but, even before, with the history of his People, freeing them from Roman servitude, like Moses did in Egypt. The theory of free will? Ruthless obstinacy of hostile forces in the Universe? Biblical retro-punishment for the predicted sentence on the cross? Or, simply, disinterest?
In reality, the only explanation is that Christ was a man from the future. A time traveler, alit by chance in Tiberius' Galilee. Not a bad physician, if you will. A capable acrobat. An immortal being (why not?) waiting for the Mother Ship to come back and pick him up. A nature lover. A naturist, a naturologist. Who explains to us that miracles (mechanics, for the Greeks) are man acting on man's environment. That science is not only the instrument of progress, but it is salvation. That science is the good goods of creation. In favor of man, without doubt, but always above his life".

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CHAPTER SEVEN
Given the enormous difficulty in proceeding, the train stopped abruptly (this time, however, leaving the passengers in the utmost indifference. Indeed, for seven kilometers speed had been reduced to a ridiculous crawl. Even more, a philosophical one. It seems that three pre-Socratic philosophers, sitting in a non-smoking first class compartment, started discussing the Zeno paradox, and how Achilles absolutely couldn't overtake the train).
Right there, not even fifteen meters away, rose the burnished monumental bridge from which the statue of the Red Pontiff of Climax would dominate the world.
All around one could see frenetic, feverish, frenzied activity. Vestigo Inani watched the works without questioning their usefulness. The usefulness must be in the works themselves, since they were being executed. At any rate, he wasn't too interested in finding out the use of a piece of work. And, in general, the use of working. The meaning was in the social context. That is, in the evidence that, socially, work had been accepted. On the contrary, his senses were focused on small things, on present chores, on repetitive acts: the waiters' quick walking by, the unloading of cement mixers, the attention of engineers shifting from plan to finished product. Not because repetition wasn't boring, but because it was the only thing able to provide the certainty of work (from which one could gather that Vestigo Inani considered as work only boring and repetitive tasks).
In addition, repetitiveness gave work the real and accessible meaning of eternal duration. Experiencing repetitiveness, although he didn't really experience it personally, gave Vestigo Inani the metaphysical pleasure of a longer suspension between life and death.
Because Vestigo Inani was convinced that, before dying, he could have lived his life all over again. And the longer the toil of life, the later death would have come.

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CHAPTER EIGHT
The pistol shot, which was heard beyond the rest house during a pause of general silence, and immediately ricocheted into the news pages, was the obvious evidence of a will to destroy which defied description.
The Chief, having sensed that the shot was destined for him, rested his beer in the hands of the German closest to the dead German. He looked cautiously around (what else could he do? He was a Chief, not a follower. Every person would have looked around with caution. He looked around with solemn caution).
The Chief had the feeling that no story, no matter how strange, could be similar to this one. And he compiled a range of the incredible and of the true. Of what he could have told, if only he could have told. Of how much people could grasp. And what kind of people it should have been. And when everything was clear to him, he decided that it was better to ignore everything. After all, people would have done the same.

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UNCHAPTER FOUR
Proclamation of the Red Pontiff of Climax to the Nation
(The proclamation, actually, was censured by the Pontiff himself. It was compiled in two copies. Amended. Continually corrected and annotated. Rearranged in the intimacy of inspiration, the Proclamation had the task of clarifying the ultimate purpose).
My brothers, in the long course of these years (in the long course of the years yet to come) I tried (I will try) to reveal to you the history of humankind. I do not mean the history of men, or of those who thought they were making history. I am not talking about zenith and nadir (after all, I don't talk astronomy). Nor about the great Armada that, just like the Invincible, was small and defeated. I am talking about that which I work for, my brothers. I am talking about your realization, about the exhaustion overcoming you in your youth, when you are still watching ecstatically death set in front of you.
My life, brothers (how can I not call you brothers, how can I call you brothers), is the image of the word (not only image, not only word). A party for the chosen (everyone talks about something else, noise translates into noise. At the end one gets the impression that the elapsed time wasn't one's own. One goes back to the morula stage. Morula is food for mucous membranes). My life is a journey: I always know where I am not going. Yours is a Diaspora: you lost your bearings.

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CHAPTER NINE
The assassin's 50 magnum came out obliquely, between the tracks, smelling the air, as if the barrel could recognize the Chief's smell, and silently plowed the cool air in the crag.
The Chief did not see it. The gun did not see him. The Chief was going down with his head low and his hands high. The gun looked straight ahead, according to the brain's logic. The Chief was worried about his life. The gun too was worried about the Chief's life.
The Chief decided to go down quicker. The gun to search for a little longer. The fact is, the gun was thinking, that we are envious of God. Even though not by much, the little he takes from us (the little we have left) we couldn't care less about. And God knows this very well: He punishes the flesh by abstinence, He punishes it by intemperance. Because the devil resides in man's loins, and is always looking for a shelter in which to hide. God's best liked angel opened a slice of universe in order to create evil on earth. The war of the sexes - a demiurge says - is a anthropophagous event anyway. God did not open a pound of that flesh to create evil, but only to pursue goodness. Unfortunately, the pleasure of the flesh arouses that very desire generated by the devil. Unfortunately, says God, without that desire, but above all without that pleasure, there could not be procreation.
In this world, everyone knows, there is not a moment of enjoyment without a religious catch resisting the most stubborn irresponsibility. The gun smirked, training the molded palladium sight.

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CHAPTER TEN
Relena Atridea heard the shot just before getting off the train. Actually, it is not so: Relena Atridea heard the shot just before getting on the train again. And she was not the only one (to hear the shot. Nor to get off and on the train). Relena Atridea remained alert.
As if to say that she was completely fed up with beatings and shootings. She thought of turning back, but saw other railway travelers think of turning forward.
Therefore, she crawled under the train's belly. There she found the remains of some fast food (not yet attacked by the beggar ants because of the nauseating odor), and an arrangement of human shit. That it was human was easy to prove: each was covered by an accordion of toilet paper (more or less long, according to the generator's brush stroke) fluttering at every little puff of wind. The gun turned the sight away from ambushes and negotiations. It went down the tracks, backward, and skirted along the hill along a strip of juicy grass. Just in time to see Relena Atridea roll down from the other side and climb a car in the front, her legs at an acute angle.


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UNCHAPTER FIVE
Proclamation of the Red Pontiff of Climax to the Nation
(The proclamation, signed and autographed, is for sale in the bookstores protected by the Empire: from the late-pagan one of the virgin Messalina to the more recent one of the God Park (where, among other things, one can find board games and the complete scripts of the most popular Television shows).

Comrades, companions, dominions, nothing like poverty, more than poverty, horrifies me. Because when I think of poverty, when I see poverty, I see (that is, my glance falls on) a heap of children, all skinny, all in a line, with flies in their eyes (poor kids) pretending to cry (because no liquid comes out) and looking at their mothers. Mothers with wrinkled breasts (that I would be embarrassed to show a doctor), which they try to squeeze, wringing them like rags.
Poverty is uncomfortable, fellows, lets admit it without regrets. And were it not necessary, I myself would pledge to defeat it...

(Needless to say, during the attack against poverty the Pontiff was shedding tears of powerlessness. Scores of poor people dropped dead in front of the lenses - bothering the flies and forcing the camera operator to perform focal acrobatics. The film was black and white. The field of view went from the gray of the environment to the white of the bones, to the black of the mouths, wide-open and cavernous. The little ones were curious about everything. The mothers chewed fresh hay and regurgitated it into those throats as a stringy mash. After the crying, long sighs in the belly).

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CHAPTER ELEVEN
The " Lo Zeitung der Zeitverschwendung " released a special edition (at night) about the life of some suspicious instigators.
People without a homeland (stateless). Men and women who had lived (or were living) in promiscuous relationships. Who lacked deep (long-lasting) feelings, or a specific ideal other than crime (and not a crime in particular). People who, according to the experts (stock brokers, psychologists, merchants, artisans) had committed libidinous acts with every living thing (down to the rock moray), abhorred the civil and penal laws (including procedures), derided jusnaturalism and Kant's rationalism.
Animals, said the " Lo Zeitung der Zeitverschwendung ", more than people. More than men and women. Or other.
The instigators' common matrix went back to a reliable and tested fact: their family's income. One could draw the (statistical) conclusion that instigators may be either very poor or very rich (aut Caesar aut nullus1). The middle class (the bourgeoisie) was not included in those statistical studies (which goes to show that the truth is in the middle).

1 Lat. : either Caesar or nobody

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CHAPTER TWELVE
At dawn of the third day the "Journal du huitieme jour" intervened with a main article on the usefulness of the army in emergency situations (the already challenged "De militum natura 1").
It was in that occasion that the Deans of the remotest Universities on earth uncovered for the participants of the meeting the results of a top-secret research project, also named "the optimistic patriot" (research that was facilitated by the almost total lack of patriots, and by the final disappearance of optimists).
There was, as can be seen, a basic terminology attrition that, after analysis, did not offer interpretation keys but new unthinkable certainties.
It was in that occasion that all were convinced that an army may function even in a democratic State (because democracy does not work in any army), and that an army's usefulness is always true, even against fate (although it is better to be on fate's same side).

1 Lat: "On the nature of soldiers

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UNCHAPTER SIX
Proclamation of the Red Pontiff of Climax to the Nation
(The Proclamation will suddenly appear where it was planned to appear. At the best time for its appearance. The astrologers believe that the letters hide a virus, the technocrats believe that the ink hides a virus, the cartographers believe that the sheets of paper hide a virus, which will unleash words without discrimination of placement.)

Do not be satisfied with explanations, my brothers. A scholar, a famous critic may persuade you that you are right even when you are. Be always false to yourselves (be yourselves). And above all picture that, since nothing lasts forever, the first of all despicable temptations is glory. Not even the Universe will be able to pride itself of how long it lasted. And with it, you (who think that you understand it, in the very smallest part) think that you embody one of its secrets. And so not be it.

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POSTFACE
At late dawn on the fourth day, around four in the afternoon, while the train was rushing at unsustainable speed towards the Capital, the Protestant minister was awakened by the screeching of a bird of prey, it was the twelfth time he had a compelling need to urinate.
He was washing up when he noticed the phial.
It was a pretty phial, enclosed in a solid silver case, with many numbers on the side, and artistic decorations along a groove in the middle (work, perhaps, by Cellini himself). A phial the like of which he had never seen, containing an oily fluid. Sealed with a snap-cap, a red velvet ribbon, and red wax with a signet along the whole circumference.
The Protestant minister thought it must be a collector's perfume. In fact, many collect perfumes. He even had known somebody, a strange fellow, who collected books. He had an enormous amount of them: from his study to the stairs, from the bathrooms to the garage. And he never tired of buying them. And the more he bought the more he wanted to buy, because the spirit of collecting, after a while, becomes similar to a vice. Some vices we burn, others we set aside, others again we accumulate. But, above all, every vice is a sin, and as such must be repressed. Therefore, the Protestant minister pocketed the phial and went back to sleep until they reached the Capital.

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