The Fourth Circle Read online

  When I first saw him in the clearing in front of the temple, in the mental picture created for me by the baby, it seemed to me that he had only a large cloth wrapped around him, a rather ragged and dirty one at that. Only when I reached deep into the historical files of my memory did I realize what it was. The worst thing was a large dark red blotch on the chest of the toga, a blotch that radiated from a hole obviously made by some sharp instrument. I didn't need to make a chemical analysis to know that it was clotted blood.

  But the old geezer didn't seem to mind, which meant that either he had taken the toga off some previous owner who, for obvious reasons, didn't need it any more (the thought horrified me even more than the recipe with stale cow droppings) or that his wound had healed already and the poor fellow didn't have a change of clothes. In any case, I couldn't stand to see him in that rag, so I picked out a cotton T-shirt and the trousers of a tracksuit from among Sri's things and offered them to him as a temporary replacement for the tattered toga. He turned them over in his hands for some time, obviously not sure how to put them on, which confirmed my belief that he was not from our time. (But how...? No, no hows and whys, we agreed; things are simply to be taken as they are. Probably one day all will be explained....)

  Despite all his weirdness and his spoiled ways with food, I could have learned to like the old guy—he is actually a nice man, much livelier than Sri and Buddha—if he hadn't turned the house, the cleanliness of which I used to be so proud of (until the turtles arrived), into a pigsty. All right, I can understand that he came here to hold boring male conversations from morning till night with Sri and Buddha; if they have nothing better to do, let them talk, however neglected I may feel; but was it really necessary to cover the entire floor of the temple with dust and sand, dirtying it beyond hope of ever cleaning it again, just so that they could feverishly draw circles in it? Couldn't it have been done much more effectively on one of my monitors? That might at least have created an opportunity for me too to finally find out what is, in fact, going on.

  5. EXECUTIONER

  THE THREE OF US stepped into the kingdom of the underworld.

  First my Master, who had sold his vainglorious, self-loving soul to the devil a long time ago in exchange for that marvelous talent that made divine faces and figures flow from his long fingers, images by which he enmeshed many gullible eyes in terrible deceit; for is there a worse, more cunning sin than to paint saints on monastic walls with a skill inspired by the extreme malice of Sotona?

  And then came I, God's miserable servant, who knew this—but did not want to know. My silence sheltered behind many justifications, valid in another, earlier age, but none could now bring me salvation, for I have already walked into hell to receive my rightful punishment. But at least I did so without a sinner's complaint, demonstrating my full repentance, bottomless humility, and the sincere wish to earn heavenly redemption by long, hard suffering.

  After me came the woman I had shamefully held to be Marya, despite the many signs that categorically informed me that she could not be the one whom she, with that beautiful face, impersonated. Would the real Marya, the Queen of Heaven, have returned the dead Master to life, knowing that he was but the worthless servant of the Lord of Hades? Would she have committed with him the most terrible sin, which cannot appear even in the most secret thoughts without smearing forever her whole soul with filth? Would she walk with me into the nether kingdom, where her twice-sacred foot could never tread?

  Yet here she is, following my fearful self down the worm-eaten, rotting ladder leading from the entrance in the cellar to the first circle of the devil's lair, as if she had trod this path without return countless times before. Finally we reached the bottom of the fateful ladder, which sinners can descend only. The source of the glow of fires and the poisonous stench were soon descried, striking my convulsed soul with a deep chill: a cold that became no less when the woman, whom I had sinfully taken for Marya, again put her frail hand on my bony shoulder granting me once more the benefit of the current that flowed from it.

  The scene that stretched before my tear-filled, failing eyes, dismal wherever their gaze could reach, instantly shook my brave determination to take my punishment with penitent gratitude. Had I seen even Sotona himself, the most merciless executioner of the world below, it would be a sight merely terrible, but not other-worldly, for what is the chief of all the evil spirits of Hades if not just one among the fallen angels, who kept his first countenance, though changed terribly? But those amidst which I now found my worthless self had no human marks at all, neither vigorous limbs, nor a slender body, nor even the blessed face that is the expression and window of our eternal soul. Innumerable spheres, each as tall as a man's knees, thickly covered the infernal ground of the first circle, glowing with a soft rosy luster. Despite the perfection of their form, these miraculous things were from some other Creation, and not the Lord's, for the Almighty could never have made these in His own image, as He did with all other creatures that grace the pied globe.

  Yet these balls of many colors, though not sprung from God's spirit, were not unliving things: as I gazed on them in perplexity, three of them, not far from us, began to swell and in an instant grew in stature from knee-high to the height of a man's hip, at which their distended bodies burst thunderously, like an overblown blacksmith's bellows. When a thick greenish fog had gushed from their torn bodies and dissipated, three new spheres stood in their place, the same height as the others.

  And when tendrils of the fog from their entrails reached the gray hairs of my old nostrils, nausea assailed me, so powerfully that for a moment I swayed on my feet and put my trembling hands to my face. This then was the terrible stench from which I had recoiled at the cellar entrance into the gullet of hell! A stench that I, in my ignorance, had thought merely the rank foulness of the devil I saw now came from the gross swelling of these unearthly creatures. I thought that if I were sentenced to dwell for all eternity among these balls, to breathe in their stench, which is worse than that of a rotting corpse, then my sin must be greater and more vile than I had miserably supposed even in moments of deepest repentance!

  But there was no time for belated penitent contemplation: Marya's hand on my bony shoulder pushed me gently forward, and only then did I become aware that, while I was trying in disgust to keep back the stink of the terrible other-worldly spheres, my Master was striding among them, guided by some secret purpose. And lo, I beheld a new miracle: the balls moved aside obediently to let him pass, pressing each other as if they were a flock of sheep in a narrow pen and he a stern shepherd, and the way was thus opened for us all.

  But whither? Taken by a sudden apprehension that this awful stench was not my final punishment, I turned my helpless, imploring eyes on Marya, but on her beautiful face remained the same smile. Was this the joyful expression of a guardian angel who had taken my sinful self under her wing, or the malicious grin of an evil spirit gloating beforehand over my future torment?

  Torn by these twofold thoughts, I moved irresolutely after the Master, toward encounter with my unknown destiny. But our slow progress through the spheres that moved aside for us as one and closed again in a dense crowd behind us was not to last long. My Master had hardly gone but twenty steps when he stopped abruptly.

  I lacked any opportunity to wonder at this strange, unexpected halt amid another field of balls, for three of them, immediately ahead of us, swelled rapidly.

  Warned by previous experience, I put my hand to my nose, to protect myself from the pestilent malodor that I knew would gush forth any moment now when the guts of these creatures burst open.

  But it was not so.

  The spheres reached the height of my waist without breaking up, and when two stopped swelling, their glow turned from rosy to black. The third continued to swell enormously, its leathery membrane growing ever thinner, until it reached the height of a man, or even a little over.

  My hands slid of their own accord down my wrinkled face when a new marvel manif
ested itself before my eyes: a face, unclear at first, showed under the now transparent membrane of the biggest ball, amid the green fog that had thinned considerably. I stepped forward and lowered my head, the better to behold this miserable apparition, the monstrous destiny of which was to dwell shut up with the most dreadful stench for eternity. What terrible, unforgivable sin must that woeful creature have committed to merit such harsh punishment? Was there a sin great enough to call forth such enormous wrath from the Lord?

  I soon received an answer, for regarding it closely, I saw a soldier inside, so wild and cruel in his mien that his appearance alone would send his opponents fleeing in horror. This soldier came not from our Christian times, but from an ancient pagan army, and was the one who had scourged Hrist Himself with a three-lashed knotted whip, driving Him bleeding and crowned with thorns to carry His cross on frail shoulders up the hill of Calvary to the crucifixion, that heavenly salvation for us, the later born.

  In a twinkling, my previous pity for his ghastly destiny changed to avenging glee that the Lord's justice had caught up with the criminal, perhaps the most heinous of all, and allotted a punishment that might even be too mild. Are there indeed any tortures meet for the murderers of the Son of God, that they might expiate their hideous crime? No! Were this infectious green fog a hundred, a thousand times more malodorous, it would still be the finest perfume in comparison to that immeasurably evil transgression!

  Blinded by sudden fury, I began raising my feeble old fists to repay him through the thin membrane for the sufferings of our Savior, though it be with such weak blows, but my anger was not destined to be vented as I so dearly wished. For hardly had I raised my clenched fists to the level of my head and taken a short swing, when the Roman soldier moved adroitly and more swiftly than I. Drawing his sharp sword, he swiftly drove it through the tense membrane of the swollen sphere, burying it to the hilt just under my ribs.

  We stood thus as if turned to stone for a few moments, he observing me with a blank, cross-eyed look, which seemed to wander beyond me, and I staring dully back at him, filled with a multitude of questions. But I had no time for any of them, nor even to feel the sharp pain, for as soon as the executioner withdrew his sword from my chest, a bottomless abyss seemed to yawn under me and I slid inexorably into it, into thick darkness and endless silence, the which brings blessed oblivion to doomed souls.

  6. SHERLOCK HOLMES'S LAST CASE (2) GHOST

  "BUT MORIARTY IS dead!" I said in amazement.

  The look that Holmes shot me was enough to make me doubt the accuracy of that statement, one that I had until now considered to be beyond any reasonable doubt, and I hastened to add:

  "Isn't he?"

  He did not reply but turned towards the window and looked through the gap between the curtains into the night. Even on my way here, the fog had been closing in, and by now it lay heavily all around so that the glow from the nearby street-lamp seemed blurred and subdued. All looked hazy and unreal, this late London autumn.

  As he clasped his hands behind his back, Holmes tugged the fingers of one hand with the other, causing a characteristic cracking sound. He would do this from time to time when he was deep in thought, probably because it helped him to concentrate. People tend to have such mannerisms—usually they drum on the table or on the armrest of the chair—not caring one whit that it gets on the nerves of others. I was indeed irritated by this cracking of his knuckles; I had mentioned it to him several times, but he continued to make the noise, probably quite unaware that he was doing so.

  "But Holmes," I said, addressing his back, "I was personally present when Moriarty's corpse was taken out of the lake. The water was very cold, so that the body had remained well preserved. There was no doubt whatsoever; it was him all right. What's more, I assisted later at the autopsy. His lungs were full of water—"

  "I know, I know," Holmes interrupted, continuing to stare vacantly into the foggy night. "But never underestimate Moriarty."

  This statement startled me. Had it not been made in an extremely serious voice, I would have thought that Holmes was in a playful mood and was pulling my leg. That would not have been unlike him; he enjoyed seeing my confusion and bewilderment when he proposed some inconceivable idea. However, not infrequently it would happen that the impossible turned out to be possible after all, so that in such circumstances I had always to be careful. One never really knew where one was with Holmes.

  "Come now," I said, not wishing to deny him the pleasure of the surprise I thought he might have prepared for me. "You are not going to tell me that you believe in ghosts?"

  He turned and looked at me with a piercing gaze in which superiority and contempt battled for dominance.

  "What do you know about ghosts, Watson?"

  "Well, I...don't know...." I blustered. "I mean, some people believe...but science...."

  "Science is only a small vessel, a cup perhaps, with which a quite negligible volume of positive knowledge has been lifted from a veritable ocean of ignorance," he said, in the tone of a teacher who is lecturing an unruly pupil. "However much that vessel may be enlarged, it will never contain the whole ocean."

  What could I say to this? Had I countered in any way whatsoever, we would have embarked upon one of those long, futile arguments, entirely devoted to matters of principle, which he vastly enjoyed, having assigned me the role of the naive, rather thickheaded interlocutor who ought to be enlightened but first exposed to mockery—the Socrates syndrome.

  But this was not an appropriate moment for that game: if Moriarty truly were behind the letter—though I still could not see how that was possible—then there was no time at all for fruitless debate. Fortunately, Holmes seemed to be aware of this too, for he soon changed the topic of conversation.

  "Besides," he went on, in a rather more moderate voice, "who said anything about ghosts?"

  "How else could someone who has been dead for weeks post a letter unless he is a ghost? Not that I can really see how a ghost could post a letter, either, but—that's another matter."

  "Didn't I tell you not to underestimate Moriarty, Watson? In fact, it does not take any particular ingenuity to see how it could have been carried out."

  This sting was, of course, aimed at me, because I was still unenlightened. I decided therefore to risk airing a thought that had just come to me, though it sounded extremely silly, even to me.

  "Reincarnation," I said, or rather whispered, in an almost God-fearing tone.

  "What?" said Holmes, in genuine disbelief.

  That was what I had been afraid of. I had not guessed correctly, and now I would have to offer an explanation.

  "I mean...you mentioned it yourself...the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. ..and that cult in Tibet, what was its name...the soul coming back to life in a new body...."

  Holmes interrupted me angrily. "I know what reincarnation is, but Moriarty did not go in for that, at least not that we know of. There are, admittedly, several hazy patches in his biography, when he was lost to the world for weeks at a time, but I don't think he reached Tibet. Although...."

  He paused for a moment, as if sidetracked by a sudden thought that threatened to undermine his previous self-assurance, but did not allow it to gain momentum; he briefly shook his head and continued: "No, I give no credit to such a thought...And if he was involved with local amateurs vainly attempting to imitate the Dalai Lama, then he could, at best, have returned to life as a radish or a ladybird. But radishes and ladybirds do not send letters, Watson."

  I had, therefore, once again imprudently jumped the gun. Never mind, it was not the first time. There was nothing else for it but to ask contritely for an explanation. Indeed, this was what Holmes was waiting for, and we ought to please our friends, ought we not?

  "So, what did happen?" I asked meekly.

  "Occam's razor, my dear chap, Occam's razor. When assumptions begin to swarm, choose the simplest one."

  He must have repeated this sentence at least a hundred times before, in var
ious situations, just as he had told and retold the story of the remarkable William of Occam. Only, what was the good of that, when I had as yet proved less than dexterous in wielding that "razor?" Very well, all the glory belongs to the adroit Holmes. Let us hear the rest.

  "Moriarty did send the letter, Watson, but not while dead; he did it while he was still alive. I assume he did the following: he paid someone to deliver the letter to my address on a certain day, namely today, and in an anonymous manner—by sliding it under the front door, so as not to give me the opportunity of questioning the bearer. This arrangement would have been cancelled only if he personally went to the bearer and withdrew the original instruction, which, I surmise, he would indeed have done had he not perished in the lake. Since his arrival in person did not occur for self-evident reasons, the letter was delivered and—here it is. Simple, is it not?"

  It really was simple, seen in this post festum light. So it always was with Holmes's elucidations. I had indeed good reason to feel sheepish. Reincarnation!

  Really!

  "Splendid, Mr. Holmes," I said sincerely. "The matter is therefore resolved."

  "Nothing is resolved, my dear Watson," replied Holmes quietly.

  I looked at him, perplexed. "But we know who the sender was, and the method of delivery too."

  "Indeed. But these are marginal details. The real problems are only just beginning to appear. We must first discover why Moriarty wanted the letter to reach me only in the eventuality of his death. Then we must establish the meaning of the message."

  "You mean—this circle?"

  "Yes, but please do not embark upon rash and unfounded reasoning again,"

  said he in a voice that brooked no objection. "The matter is far more serious than one might conclude at a glance."