Ilmar Penna Marinho Junior - The beast of a thousand years

The priest immediately gave a huge smile to greet his friend, who waited for him on the castle’s drawbridge, frowning.

“Hurry up, I’m dying of curiosity. You know that God tends to forgive the careless and punish the grumpy” Antoine apologized jokingly.

The keeper of the castle, of the high nobility of Anjou, impeccable in his blazer and bowtie, went down the slippery stone stairway in hurried footsteps, followed by the sweaty priest.

“Be careful! Don’t stumble and fall down these medieval stairs! They are very steep, watch your step.”

“Oh, dear! These steps are still horrible,” complained father Antoine. “I almost fell, with your haste, like the world is coming to an end.”

They finally crossed the limestone portal, the boutique, the closed box office and, after going through the two doors, with a space between them to keep the acclimatization, they entered the long, lit hall of the gallery, which housed the tapestry.

Antoine took one step forward and stopped in front of the tableau of the first major character, sitting beneath a canopy, depicting St. John on the island of Patmos. He was in awe, silent, suspended in the contained admiring reverence before the embossed masterpiece woven by the magical hands of wonderful craftsmen. He shifted his eyes to the Seven Churches ­­scene. He felt like he was walking on clouds with the new lighting. As if it was the first time he saw those biblical scenes of the canonical book and the four great characters, urging the viewer to be amazed by the contemplation and the allure of the exceptional masterpiece.

“Wow, it looks wonderful! It’s like the tableaus speak! This new lighting recovers the forgotten values of the Middle Ages. My eyes are thankful for being here” said Antoine, moved by the breathtaking longitudinal vision of the tapestry, completely restored and with its colors totally rejuvenated, that went on as far as the eyes could see on the large wall. The scenes came one after the other in six big tableaus, each one more dramatic and exceptional than the other. It became difficult for him to choose which one was more beautiful and illustrative, some abstract, others figurative.

“There have been several restorations on the seventy-seven scenes after the tapestry returned to the castle in 1906, because of the law of Separation Between Church and State. Although it remained linked to Catholicism’s worship, it was declared property of the State. It came back to Chateau D’Angers after a six-century absence. This time, for the gallery’s modernization, we’ve used cutting-edge technology” the administrator clarified while they slowly entered the perfect semidarkness of the room. This was guaranteed by the two-thousand diffusing lamps, powered by optical fibers, on the sequence of impressive images hung by thick Velcro strips, avoiding the use of nails that could damage the tapestry.

“You did it. The visitor feels blessed by God for being here, at the heart of Christendom and the renewal of faith.”

“We just have to tweak the placement of the tableaus.”

“It looks very good like this. Why mess with it? Leave it like that.”

“Look at this tableau of Christ and the sword, how the blues were enhanced,” said Ferdinand, slowly moving forward.

Antoine passed by the fifth scene, the one with St. John in tears, and thought of the miracle of the representation of the divine scenes, based on the saint’s apocalyptical visions. He squeezed his hands behind his body and stood before the sixth scene of the incredible vision of the world disfigured by the earthquake. He kept on walking in silence. He saw the grandiose scenes of the battlefields, of the terrible fight between good and evil, the land devastated by the seven plagues and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the assault of the beasts sent by the devil, the beast from the Earth, the one from the sea, the frogs, the locusts. He contemplated the war of fire and the trembling of the earth. He took a few more steps and watched the fall of Babylon and, a little further on, with a hallowed eye, he saw the suspended New Jerusalem, triumphant, in the glory of eternal salvation.

“No one can imagine the work that has to be done to keep this masterpiece intact in the grandeur of its biblical dimension,” said Ferdinand, touched. “There’s been an immense effort in order to increasingly improve the state of preservation of this work of art so that the public could appreciate the prophetic vision of the Apocalypse and understand its message of hope.”

“These are paintings that explain the permanent struggle between humanity and evil. Look at this tableau, number 52,” said the priest. “It’s the scene of the Sleep of the Seven Righteous, who managed to resist the words of the Antichrist. They rest in their mortuary berths with their souls saved before ascending to the starry sky, taken by two angels.”

“Beautiful! The lighting canonized this image of the ascension to Heaven.”

“Look at this scene of New Jerusalem,” the curator pointed with his index finger. “It’s one of my favorites. It’s a shame we weren’t able to recover all the missing pieces of the tapestry. I’m heartbroken when I see, at the gallery’s exit, the frustration on the visitors’ expressions caused by the absence of the images of the Sixth Great Character, of the Horseman with the Horse the Color of Fire and War, of the Earthquake, of the Four Winds, of the Condemned Prostitute, of the Wedding of the Lamb, of God’s Verb, of the Birds Devouring the Ungodly and of the Final Judgment. I’ll never accept the fact that they’ve disappeared without trace. I won’t lose hope that one day they may find all the scenes and that they can come here, to complete the Revelation.”

“You didn’t mention the most important loss,” Antoine pointed out.

“Which one? I think I’ve mentioned all of them. Did I miss one?”

“You’ve skipped the scene of the Devil Caged for a Thousand Years.”

“You are right, Antoine. Forgive me. It’s so obvious I forgot! The visitors always leave frustrated because they haven’t seen the caged devil. Without a doubt, tableau 75 is the great absence in the gallery. Maybe the greatest one, because of its symbolism.”

“Do you have any idea of how the original scene looked?” asked the priest.

“Specialists have researched and came to the conclusion, based on the rigor of the color alternation throughout the tapestry, that the missing tableau 75 had a red background, since tableaus 74 and 76 have a blue background. And the devil was represented by a seven-headed dragon, the classic figure used as a representation of the Beast,” answered the curator.

“To the Catholics, it’s not the tableau itself that is important, but its message. The scene would show the insistence and the survival of faith. We imagine that, if the scene from the tapestry is traveling the world, with the devil on the loose, this explains so much crime, lust, perversion, and pornography, and the worst thing is that it may have worshipers all around the Earth…”

Father Antoine continued, as if preaching at the altar, and was totally taken by his pious, rapt inspiration before the curator’s admiring gaze, who saw him go from the state of artistic grace to that of divine grace.

“Then Satan would symbolically win the battle against faith if the scene is roaming free around the world, as he would also be. That’s why we, men of faith, preach to our believers to not use condoms, because sex is meant for procreation, never for pleasure and lust. They don’t understand that. The plague of AIDS is nothing but the victory of lust and degradation! They don’t want to hear us when we are against abortion and researches with stem cells from human beings who didn’t have the right to be born. They don’t understand that they are killing the embryos because life exists since conception, the soul is already present. They don’t understand why we are against human cloning, because only God can give and take life. They don’t want to hear God’s voice anymore in the Babylon of our time. Enough! I don’t want to talk any further. ”