Svetislav Basara: The Cyclist Conspiracy

And then the voice said to me: You should know, this tower will I destroy and it will be raised again and again I will tear it down, and then all be will one and all.

And behold, I was immediately awake, and in my hand was a tablet into which I pressed the seal of our secret testament, as I was told, two wheels of fire and the letter Daleth of fire.

Ferrarius told me all kinds of things. Not only how the first tower of Babylon was destroyed but also how another would also be built. He showed me their relic, a cart made in the image of Ezekiel’s vision with wheels one behind the other. With it, he said, one can reach the heavens. I knew, of course, that this was just an allegory but, just for fun, I ordered Grossman to ride down the slope next to the court on it. He almost broke his neck. Since then he cannot stand the Two-Wheelers and can hardly wait for them to leave. Because of that, I ordered him to write a history of their sufferings in Paris. The hypocrite. He thinks that I don’t know that he is secretly scribbling in my margins with invisible ink. If I strain my ears, I can hear him scribbling, scratching on the surface of history, leaving behind his stains, driven by the mindless desire not to evaporate from the world’s memory. But, now back to the executions. To prove my lack of bias, I even sent my wife, Queen Margot, to the gallows. She was trying to usurp the throne with the aid of her lover, Baron von Kurtiz. I do not know what is wrong with these idiots, and their number is countless, what drives them to dream of ruling and of thrones? Do they think I saved every penny for twenty years just to rule? No, my intention is to bring a metaphysical concept into reality. Margot was not a bad wife, but she could not resist the handsome von Kurtiz. Radbertus of Odense, in a book he will soon write, says that beauty is the weapon of the Devil. And then, there is always female vanity. So, once I went into the coal room by surprise — and there was Margot in front of a mirror. The devil was taking her from behind, and she was staring transfixed by the reflection of the infernal buttocks. I knew this would not end well. In spite of everything, I did not want to act rashly. I thought, it’s a passing madness. A couple of times I caught her in the garden, making out with the Baron, but I pretended to be dreaming. Ah, but then I had had enough and I awoke and called in my servants. The next day, I prepared a real show for the masses. Exciting and educational all at once. So that people would know what greed and beauty lead to. But this was a small comfort for my ugliness. This is how I look, for the sake of my offspring I will describe myself: short of build, crooked back, crooked legs, crooked arms; dressed in a shapeless tunic of laced leopard skin. On my forehead I have a rather large growth. My right eye is small, sunk deeply in its socket; the left eye is covered with a cataract. But such a depiction will never reach my offspring. Gottfried of Mainz did a rather flattering painting of me, fearing my royal anger, and I closed one eye in it, tricked by my own vanity, and accepted the painting as it was, a false rendition of myself, a fake…

As the Preacher said long ago: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Taking the throne of a kingdom that I bought from a bankrupt count, I walled up all the doors on the monastery of St. Panfucius, in order to preserve the purity of the faith, and I changed the name of the monastery just to spite the Pope, that seller of indulgences. There he is in Rome lounging about in silks and velvets, instead of roaming the earth barefoot and looking for someone to crucify him. He sends the Jesuits to re-convert me to his mercantile religion. But no. I have switched to the Orthodox Church. The monastery is now called St. Gregory Palama. Underneath it I built a twisting labyrinth with its entrance on the square in front of the cathedral, and its exit in the courtyard of the monastery. Those aspiring to monastic dignity must pass through the labyrinth. The unworthy get lost and remain in one of its corners forever. Once, accompanying Grossman to communion, I saw some grinning skeletons in the torchlight and I thought to myself: If it weren’t for those skulls, those little bones, man would be absolutely nothing. Ouk on , as my majordomo would say. Stop! Nihilism! Heresy. Those who are indeed led by the Holy Spirit, glory be to God, arrive safe and sound. In this way, a high degree of spirituality is achieved. Dry bread and a little water, farewell to space and time. My monks see forward and backward. They dream the dreams that will be had by future generations; they know the intentions of my enemies. They speak with angels. They walk on water. Occasionally I take one of the monks out to walk on the lake, for the good of the people and for the sake of obedience. On the high holy days, the Hegumen of the monastery rises a hundred or so cubits, so that I don’t say “meters” as an anachronism, he rises, as I was saying, above the bell tower of the church and holds the High Liturgy. On the other hand, I built a huge tavern for the sinners, thieves and perverts where they can enjoy their vices to their hearts’ content, and not upset the decent Christian folk. I separated good and evil and I swing in the middle on my throne-Golgotha. I am highly depraved. I descend into the very depths of sin in order to achieve the highest degree of holiness. That is the fabric of the world: Evil foes besiege the borders of my kingdom, demons besiege the soul of the king. Beautifully said. I defend my subjects from their enemies, both earthly and heavenly. I take all temptations upon myself. The monks have no time for that. Almost completely beyond , blind to this world, with a thin membrane that covers their earthly eyes and with white lilies in their hands — as if in a picture that Nemanja will one day paint — they are undermining time and space so that, when the time is right, they can raise my kingdom into Heaven. In order to pluck my empire from the claws of history, from the pit of sin. For this very reason, I never wanted to expand my borders. To make it easier for the kingdom. Who could possibly raise such a colossus as the Roman Empire into the heavens when, because of its bulkiness, it sank into hell, and is still sinking ever deeper? A large country, a multitude of people — there is nothing good in that. As time passes, there will be more and more people. But people are like golden coins. The more of them there are, the less they are worth. People as tokens. Counterfeit persons without ontological backing. They do not even know what ontology is. They think that God is hidden in the attic of my palace. Fools who spit upon the past. There you have it, one more reason to prevent the tyranny of the yet unborn common masses, to write their history ahead of time, to determine it for them. That is my natural right. Because, if I would just try, though I have no such intention, I could live another mere three hundred and fifty years, if I would just drink less and avoid wild game on the dining table. But none of those people, no matter how hard they try, will be able to return to the past, my past where I rule supremely with the aid of faithful Grossman, not out of a craving for power, but from a feeling of calling to teach those pretentious bastards the principle of subordination. And the monks all agree with me. They came by the other night. They sat with me. The Hegumen said that, in their dreams, they had discovered what happened to the Etruscans. What’s an Etruscan, I asked. And the Hegumen said that, long ago, where Rome and the so-called Vicarius Dei Filii are today, a people named the Rascians used to live, who one day disappeared from the face of the Earth. Just as we ourselves intend to do. Their priests-dreamers, going into the future down the path of dreams, saw what will one day happen on the ill-fated Apennine peninsula. One night, they all went to sleep and in their dream they saw a new country across the sea, mountainous and water-rich, so they woke up there and, in order to cover their tracks in history, they called themselves by a new name — the Serbs. A shocking tale. It was told, as I later found out, to soften my heart and quiet my anger. Because, as they departed, the Hegumen took me aside and said that there, beyond it all, Margot was meeting with Von Kurtiz. Grossman told me the same thing. They see the two of them, they say, under my windows, in the dark of night, their necks bloody. And for the first time, I was overcome with sadness instead of rage. Is it possible that not even death, I thought, is able to overcome infidelity and treason? And then two tears appeared in the corners of my eyes: Oh, Margot, Margot…