Svetislav Basara - The Cyclist Conspiracy

“The thing about watches,” Kowalsky told me, “especially digital ones, that I don’t like is that they work too fast, they count off hundreds of seconds as well. Generally speaking, a web of great mystification has been woven around time. Above all, the mystification about the ostensible objectivity of time. Utter nonsense. Time is a completely subjective matter, but every person is not a subject, and that is the problem. Timepieces are perhaps exact, but time is not, time is a matter of personality, or even of affinity. So, since no one is without a watch any more, no one has time. A multitude of other mystifications are built onto that one, like the general advancement of technology and medicine that have brought about the extension of human life expectancy. Perhaps human life expectancy has been extended, but it is only pro forma. According to some research, which does not claim to have the right to exactness (far from it), in the 13 thcentury fifty years lasted as long as, approximately, 110 in the 20 thcentury. That is the secret: the general collapse of things includes time as well; it is degenerating, losing intensity. The world is already half as big as it was 1,000 years ago. In order to support this claim, I will use a formula from physics…”

And Kowalsky wrote with his finger on the dusty floor:

“You see,” he said. “Space (S) is a function of Velocity (V) and Time (t). In other words, if we move faster, space grows smaller. There is no great mysticism here, that is how the world is disappearing.”

Now I will return again to the description of that place in hell where I lived for so long. It was a normal student dorm room. There was nothing terrifying in it, no cries of tortured souls, no demonic pitchforks. A rather suitable place with an average temperature of about 63 °F, incomparably lower than those they ascribe to the depths of Hades. And yet, it was hell because, of all the endless places in the world, each is equal with all the others: all of them are the entrance to hell. Of course, if that place is occupied by a human; that is the conditio sine qua non . If I am to be in hell, I must occupy space. I read some authors who say that hell is a space, and that it must have a being inside of it for the horrifying surroundings to make sense. I tend to believe, however, that hell is of internal origins, that it radiates out into space. In any case, a flat projection is unimportant. Those are all descriptions and nonsense. It makes absolutely no difference whether horror comes from the outside or inside. The horror is important.

There in that room, which was only missing a HOME SWEET HOME sign to make the farce complete, my soul was stewing on the flames of my own hell, being deceived by the average temperature of 63 °F, and by statistics in general. Until the day when I met Kowalsky and became enthralled with Bicyclism. Listening for several days to his stories about the secret order, about his magnificent exploits, I realized that my entire previous life had been a series of absolute mistakes. I felt unworthy to ask if I could become a member of the Little Brothers of the Evangelical Bicyclists of the Rose Cross. To my misfortune, I was quickly released from jail and told to pay a fine. I went home, paid the fine, made up with my mother and almost forgot about Kowalsky. Two years later, I got a letter from India. Wondering who could be writing me from that distance, I turned the envelope over and saw “from: Kowalsky.”

Here are the contents of that letter:

Dharamsala

21 December 1953

Dear Doctor Çulabi,

No doubt you are surprised that I am writing to you even though we did not exchange addresses, but I am also sure that you will not be angry. Two years ago, when I had the honor of sharing a jail cell with you, I spoke of the Little Brothers of the Evangelical Bicyclists of the Rose Cross. I still remember the interest you showed in my, probably lengthy, explanation. I am also convinced that you yourself wished to belong to the brotherhood, but that you did not dare to ask. However, I must tell you that you were already, at that time , most certainly a member of the Evangelical Bicyclists. Unconscious of it, of course. But the best and most edifying things are done unconsciously. Even the members of the trifling sects of psychoanalysts talk about that.

But now I will move on to the explanation that I owe you. This is how it is possible to belong to the brotherhood and not be conscious of it for years. The dead members of our ancient and honorable Order do not cease their activities after death. To the contrary, it could be said that the real activity of all Bicyclists of the Rose Cross actually begins then, but such a definition is meaningless. Wrenched from the course of time, they see a certain part of the past and a corresponding part of the future as integral. Maintaining the legend, our dead fathers know all members of the Little Brothers , not only those who were and are, but also those who will later be. Consequently, a Grand Master of the order knew about you long before I did, and I was assigned to be your mentor long, long before we met in that charming cell.

Before I induct you into the secrets of the Order, a warning must be given: it is neither easy nor simple to be an Evangelical Bicyclist. You must be prepared to do anything. And above all — to believe in everything.

It is customary that the mentor tells the newly-accepted member something about his life. The purpose of that act is initiation, because mentor and candidate are connected in a mystical way. Regardless of whether they ever meet or of how great the distance is between them, their lives are connected and they somehow complete each other, making up a coherent whole, and therefore the number of members of the Evangelical Bicyclists is always an even one. The day when one of the members dies, the mentor begins to compose the text for the initiation. However, the text is sent on the day of birth of the dead member. Your predecessor in the Order, whose secret name was Steely, was born on December 21, and that is why the letter was sent to you on that date. Since letters from Dharamsala travel exactly 40 days to their destinations, you are becoming aware that you are one of the Bicyclists at the same moment when (after the post mortem purification, the length of which is calculated with the formula: date of death + time from date of death to date of birth + 40 days ) your predecessor is becoming aware that he has overcome death, passed the Second Initiation and taken his place in the eternal hierarchy. In this way, the consciousness of the individual, and indeed of the entire Order, is constantly increasing through carefully coordinated this-worldly and other-worldly events. In that way the Great Secret is carefully hidden from the profane, simultaneously revealing itself ever more to the consecrated. This goes so far that even people of remarkable spirituality, but who are skeptics at heart, consider the very existence of the order to be a rather bad joke.

So much for now. Remember the words of St. Paul, “I have fed you with milk and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it.” My confession follows. You should keep in mind that it is not true, because in this world nothing is true any more. Once long ago, the Truth revealed itself, but few were those who believed it. That is why the world is punished by believing in the greatest lies.

In my youth, my dear friend, I was this way and that, much more evil than good. But that is no longer important. The dead brothers have erased my past. I will tell you about my gradual conversion. After many years of studying poetry and literature, after a period in which I was a nihilist and revolutionary, overnight I changed my convictions and became a royalist. You might ask: What kind of belief is that anyway, to be a nihilist? The answer is: the most edifying. To consider the world and yourself in it as null and void, that is worthy of the most edified spirits. However, the years got to me: I became something of a conformist, it was harder and harder for me to put up with the extremeness of nihilism and the unity of the revolutionaries to whom I belonged. If anything could make me angry (I am using the past tense, because nothing can make me angry any longer) it was unity and unanimity. And yet, the fact that I was a subject of a country ruled by a king gave my convictions a certain dose of bizarreness, necessary for me to be able to live at all. At that time, you see, it was not fashionable to be a royalist. My comrades at the time, I must mention this, despised me, but I could already see then that the envy of the rich was concealed behind their concern about the welfare of people, and I already knew then that, once they had triumphed, they would become the same as the objects of their hatred. Because, like takes displeasure in like. In my dreams, I always saw a terrible multitude of people, raising their hands and repeating nonsense like a choir.