January 1998
Sex gushed like a fountain, erupted, imitated the ideal... then ran dry. After every round, my body ached, my penis throbbed, and my head split. Powder and champagne came to the rescue. My mind exploded, my flesh drowned in a sea of passion just like I’d always dreamed... start over!
A week later, the last girl — Polina or Kristina, I couldn’t say — left. I had a goal now: shaking and sweating, pull myself back into something resembling a human being, and eat some porridge for breakfast. Or yogurt.
Got an erection, felt the itch to go up to Veronika... Wait... She’d left too... I went for the leftovers... damn it, every bottle was empty... found one! Cracked open the Martell, downed as much as I could... collapsed, drowned in a fog.
The dream was murky... someone knocked at the door, waking me:
– The witch has confessed. What should we do?
Damn it!
I went down a spiral staircase into the dungeon, following the crack of a whip lashing away... no, not here, this one hadn’t confessed yet... must be here... I threw open the door, took a step, and… struck down by the flash of gray eyes... clutched at my chest. In a cracked voice, I rasped: «Bring her out.»
What was there to discuss, when everything was already clear? When I could feel it myself, falling under a witch’s spell, turning into a worm the moment she looked at me.
I’d seen this girl dozens of times before – a fille de bourgeois from a house a hundred toises from the castle. Every time I rode out, she’d be standing by the fence, staring at me. Been staring for five years at least. Grew up and turned into a witch, taller than Beauvais Cathedral!
I walked behind the executioner. Watched them drag the witch to the scaffold, strap her to the cross with leather bands, pile brushwood under her feet, watched the abbot light a torch and hold it out to me.
To me?
I’m supposed to do this?
The crowd demands the pyre be lit, to destroy evil now and forever!
Auto-da-fé!
I walked up to the witch and felt heat flare up in my chest... an irresistible force pushing me down at the feet of a beautiful woman... felt myself turning to jelly, to hippocras... boiling away into steam that dissolved the purpose and meaning of my life.
No-o-o-o-o! There is a purpose, there is meaning! And it’s not some girl’s gray eyes!!!
I threw the torch onto the pile of brushwood, a scream of «I love you!» tore at my ears... I woke up in a cold sweat...
What castle? What count? What witch? I’m a crusader, my purpose is simple.
I looked up at the starry sky and understood the delirium was real — nobody loved me. Nobody needed me, marching through the sands onward and onward, to save the faith for everyone else and find happiness for myself. Pope Urban II had said it plainly: «To those who go, absolution from sin. Let them march against the infidel in a battle that will yield plunder. Whoever is wretched here will grow rich there!»
The Pope knows best!
I marched through the sands from city to city, killing, plundering, tearing down and breaking what other men had built. Gold promised by the Pope drew me on. I trudged after my fortune with a sword and shield that had become like family.
I trudged day after day, month after month, year after year. Trudged on, dreaming of the soul I’d left in Northamptonshire. That soul was a peer’s daughter. I, a yeoman’s son, wasn’t fit to stand beside her... but what if I came back from the campaign covered in glory? Won the love and favor of her family? One question gnawed at me: why did she keep appearing in my dreams in the shape of a witch?
We reached the goal of our campaign and painted the sky over Jerusalem red. Thousands upon thousands of infidels slaughtered for the glory of God — we found no peace, no riches. We continued on into the Levant. Won victories, suffered defeats...
We lived in the sands.
We fought in the sands.
We died in the sands.
The promised peace we never found.
Every campaign ended in battle. Every battle ended in looting and drinking amid the ashes. A new campaign would begin, bringing us before some fortress full of infidels, another siege, another battle, another massacre of captured streets, more looting, more drinking...
For decades I wandered the sands, where everyone fought everyone – Byzantines, Seljuks, Templars, Hospitallers, gangs with no banners at all, one of them mine. Thirst was killing me, exhaustion was crushing me into knots, I’d collapse and lie still in a stupor, to rest for an hour…
... and wake up in a castle.
This isn’t a starry sky! This is a bedroom ceiling!
I lay in bed and understood I was dreaming someone else’s dreams.
Yes, my great-great-grandfather had vanished in Palestine, fighting the Seljuks over the Holy Sepulchre. But what did the sands have to do with anything? A witch? Was I in love with some Englishwoman? Nonsense! I’d never once left the county in my whole life. It’s enough to know your borders and defend them firmly. The fact that I was born a count meant nothing. My father, on his deathbed, had willed me this: privileges aren’t given to be used, but to be defended against encroachment and passed down to your descendants, enlarged. I was born to fight for my privileges. Someone knocked at the door:
– The witch has confessed. What should we do?
– What? Again?!...
...I woke up a third time! Jerked upright, looked around, baffled. Sand surrounded me all the way to the horizon, and a blue-black starry sky above. My shield and sword lay beside me.
I turned my head, looking around. What castle? What witch? What count? I’m just a stonecutter from Carrara, I used to split the layered rock and my little donkey hauled off the pieces, and we were happy. But my work became worthless, the life laid out for me turned into servitude. I went off as a mercenary in the Reconquista, and now, in far-off Spain, I’m fighting the Saracens. It’s bad here. There’s no life here. I stand in the middle of the desert for a day... a month... a year…
How many years had passed? Unknown. Consciousness kept slipping away from me. Love visited in dreams and called out to me, but I couldn’t reach it, kept getting distracted by nothing. My failing mind let in visions of the future, visions of the past, but there was no room left for the present, for love. There was room for greed, envy, gluttony, arrogance, lust, wrath, and despair. Sometimes I imagined a cold city with heavy air. Streets crammed with iron carriages that had no horses. People sat in the carriages with empty stares. I had the same stare. I understood that it had all been for nothing, entirely for nothing, going off into the sands. I should have stayed home and trusted my fate — everything would have worked out. I would have married, tilled the land, raised children and grandchildren, grateful for the lot that fell to me, praying, believing that on my deathbed I’d take up the cross in happiness…
I lost all that, choosing riches instead. I struck gold and lost everything that didn’t look like coins in my purse.
Strange thoughts overtook me. Strange visions. I couldn’t make sense of them. I looked around. My strength was leaving me. I grew weaker, fell onto the sand, rolled onto my back, opened my eyes, and the last thing I saw was a condor soaring high in the sky. I was turned inside out, and I woke up.
In the desert? In the castle? In Jerusalem? In Moscow? In Krasnozemsk? In the middle of nowhere? Dark and unclear...
