SELF-PORTRAIT

A SCIENCE FICTION STORY

It was a damn cold April. A spring in North Brabant had just started, so I had to wrap myself up in a thick baize cloak. Fragrant violets have already bloomed, slightly freshening stinky odors of the medieval town.

Today I came into age, so for the first time in my life I could travel alone back in time or dive into deep space on the Ray. Both are risky businesses, but at the same time great pleasures! Ages ago, on such a day, my peers would have been able to legally drive cars, drink alcohol, and take stimulants for the first time in their lives. Ha-ha, can that really compare with today opportunities? Can anybody imagine, what will await the adventurers of tomorrow?

I chose to jump into the past and allowed myself six hours for a walk and fun, where the most exciting part were observations. After all, you were alone, by yourself, master of your destiny and future, and dangers awaited you everywhere. Can you compare it with quiet home life? At home, I worked as a habitat designer in the Reservation for Transplanetary Selection and pursued a double major in architecture and biology as a University junior. I had not yet decided whether I would go on to expand the collection of strange animals from other planets or get down to my doctoral thesis.

The Temporal Academy didn’t advise jumping more than a hundred years into the past on your first attempt. However, if you had even once in your life entered into the Tiranorat’s territory unarmed, then a thousand years wouldn’t seem like too much trouble. So, acting bravely but recklessly, I stepped into April 1471 AD.

Oh, how great it was to travel in the spring! There were flowers in the windows, buds on the trees; the sun was shining, birds were singing, and girls were smiling at you. And there was no security at all! Clear, unadulterated life… the only thing was the filthy streets. The cobbled ones were somehow OK, but the unpaved streets were the fear of God! I was walking along such a street recently, sloshing through the mud in my thick-soled, wooden clogs.

It was already noon; bells were ringing. There were many people, most of them moving in one direction – towards the center, I supposed. Yes, that was right! You could already hear the music – and here it was – a square with an open market. Aha! Evidently, it was the Market Square.  

You could buy all sort of things and show yourself to all sorts of people there. Beautiful three-story homes lined the square. The Cathedral of the Savior or perhaps the Blessed Virgin Mary stood on one side, and the town hall and courthouse – on the other. How many times had I seen this in 3D, but now here I was watching it myself! And what in the world were people selling from their stands?!

A magician “waved his spells” on his little tablet with three cups and a ball. I watched for a while how masterly he rolled the ball. Nobody can spot under which cup the fakir has hidden it; they lay out money only to lose it. The barker calls everybody to play, grabbing at their hands. He bothers me too, but I go on. I just checked the purse I had under my cloak tied to my belt with a strong rope. But the thing only looks like a purse. In fact, it was my transportation and my visa. Yes, that’s it – an elastic transmitter, ready to take me home, if I squeeze it with a certain secret rhythm.

The music is playing – a fife and drum – it’s a Gypsy show with a trained bear. The kids could not be torn away from the spectacle! On the other side of the square – puppets. A theatre. A play of betrayal and love. Young people hoot, applaud, whistle. And there’s a young woman reading fortunes. What interesting cards she has! They are not playing but special fortunetelling cards –Tarot. They look very similar to the common deck – four suits with more face, or court cards: a king, a queen, a knight and a page. An ace has the smallest number – one – and in the same time, it is the main object of action. In addition to the fifty-six cards, there are twenty-two extra cards – pictures with situations. In fact, the main card is a wizard, or a magician. On him turns one’s whole fate. And it seems that now the fate of the fortuneteller will actually turn. A tall old man in a red robe with a red calotte on his head, briskly marches toward to her. A Dominican monk and four guards armed with halberds barely keep up with him.

“Wicked, Aleyt! How many times have you broken the rules of the city and spit on the church and the secular authorities! You were warned, weren’t you?”

People quickly made room, moving to the sides, their faces immediately blinkered: their eyes – to the sky; this does not concern them.

“No one can escape fate, and cards are just a game. Hey, hey, do not touch me!”

The guards, despite her protest, have grabbed the woman by the hands, toppling her table with cards into the mud, and crushed it with their halberds, leaving it in splinters.

“You’re lucky that the inquisitors so far only teach sinners wisdom. Let the pope publish his bull and by his command we will flatten your dratted witch spawn with a hammer!” the Dominican roared.

The monk’s white robe and black cloak with the hood inspired fear no less than the guards’ uniform and weapons. The soldiers dragged the screaming and writhing woman to a post on a small platform.

“It’s only a market square, but the whole world is in it,” I thought, moving along with the crowd closer to the site of this new spectacle. The poor fortuneteller is tied to the pillory. Her dress and undershirt are torn from top to bottom baring the young white body of the woman, trembling with cold and shame.

“Ten lashes, as promised!” almost lustfully said the tall old man. His eyes shone, saliva appeared in the corners of his mouth.

From the gossip around me, I had already learned that the old man was the treasurer and artistic adviser to the “Brotherhood of Our Lady”, who had unsuccessfully solicited the merchant’s daughter – a girl who entertained citizens with her divination just for fun.

The city executioner, a stocky man in a red jacket and a black hood-mask appeared on the platform. His knotted whip terrified the onlookers – the executioner showed the crowd how it would swished through the air; in just a minute it would stick into the flesh of the victim.

“Her pretty ass has lacked affection! Give it a little caress with the whip!” yelled the onlookers who had only recently been observing, with fascination, the mysterious  play of cards, and now just as quickly had switched over to the side of the authorities.

Before I had time to think about the sin of hypocrisy, the flagellation began.

“A-a-a!” howled the miserable woman. “Damn you, Antonius, informer and adulterer. Fate will avenge me!”

“Ha-ha-ha! Feast on it! No one can help you! Neither father nor brothers! The sin on you! The redeeming blood!” His eyes rotated wildly, his face and convulsively clenched hands, waxed white in ecstasy.

“It is you, who will eat the dishes of my revenge, both cold and hot! My blood is on you! You will not even survive ten years, and your son…” and the woman on the pole went limp unconscious, after the seventh stroke of the whip. Blood was streaming along her back, flowing down the hollow between the rounded buttocks to the brown floorboard.

“Stop, stop!” I intervened and threw three heavy silver thalers onto the platform. “Please, take it for the indulgence! Behold, God has stopped flogging on the seventh stroke!”

The Dominican nodded, approving the request, and the executioner covered the fortuneteller with her clothes. Two gloomy fellows, resembling each other, and their sister shoved their way to the platform.

People gradually disappeared. The Market Square finished its Sunday life. Citizens hurried to their warm hearth, square meals and good beer. The sun had been sinking towards the horizon, giving the burghers’ brick houses a juicy tint of exotic “Chinese apples” – oranges.

“If you want to see the magician’s show, go to the city wall,” whispered the barker.

As the Square following the execution, with its splashes of blood on the platform, didn’t look like a hospitable place, I decided to go and take a look at the show, because I still had two hours of my allotted time left. I purchased a couple of cold rolls with ham from a tray and hurried after several gawkers to the outskirts of the town.

The company of ten spectators looked very motley. Our old acquaintance, Antonius, treasurer of the “Brotherhood”, in a red robe with a white cloak, stood out among them with his tall stature. Perhaps the unfinished execution had driven him to a new dose of impressions; however, other idlers, including myself, were also looking for entertainment. A young woman in a red dress and a bonnet with a peacock feather was escorted by a companion in a turban and aristocratic black houppelande, trimmed with expensive fur. On both sides of them stood a nun in a black robe and another, short Dominican. His brown chaperone with a long tippit hanging down to his mid-back strangely combined with the ordinary white and black dress of the “dogs of the Lord.” An aged townswoman with expensive rings on her fingers and a charming light green cape with baggy sleeves – a bliaut, linked arms with her daughter, a woman in a brown fur coat and hat. A little boy, their son and grandson, a seven-year-old troublemaker in a red caftan romped right there, under the feet of everyone, with a pinwheel purchased in the market. The company was concluded by a poor student in a mantle and cap, and I in the black cloak, and, in the fashion of the distant future, without any headgear. And the fakir in a red waistcoat and high court hat… I already knew him. He gave a command to the dog, like g a little jester wearing a cap with slits for its ears. The show has started.

Everybody but the treasurer liked the dog jumping through the hoop. After the dog came the monkey sitting in a wicker basket hanging from the belt of the magician. He covered the monkey with his tall hat, and the monkey disappeared; touched his wand to the cylinder – and the monkey reappeared. The audience applauded, and only Antonius muttered irritably:

“Couldn’t you show us more ingenious tricks?”

“As you say, Your Honor,” said the magician. “Take a mouthful of water from the striped cup and look me straight in the eyes.”

The old man bent with a grimace of contempt, took a sip and looked into the tricky hypnotic eyes of the performer. Instantly the treasurer’s body shuddered, he uttered a gagging sound and belched out of his mouth right onto the table… a small brown toad.

“Toads, toads, plagues of Egypt!” shouted the student.

The boy, his eyes popping, stared at the old man’s mouth wide open, drooling with foam and saliva, yelling out curses.

“Here is your cold dish!” the young woman in the red dress was shocked, remembering the curse of the fortuneteller.

“And after it the hot one will follow,” whispered her companion, hugging his impressionable ladylove.

“Dogs! Monkeys! Toads!” cursed the old man. Onto the table, he threw a small silver penny, he had kept in his fist for the performance, and irritably marched away. The Dominican squinted myopically despite the glasses on the tip of his nose, and did not take his eyes off the magician.

“Do you think Aleyt’s words have come true?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” the fakir said boldly. “Try the water yourself, gentlemen.”

The men, including me, bravely took a sip. It was ordinary cold water… Applause broke out. The spectators paid and went home. I still had time to have a shot in a medieval tavern and I followed behind a rich couple, confident that they would lead me into the city center. Impressed by what I saw, I began to dream: what if the participants represent here were in reality not random people? The Fakir is the Wizard, the creator of the future. The Treasurer is the Ace: no great shakes, but the root cause of the events. The man and the woman are the Knight and the Lady; the Dominican is the King; the child – the Page. The Grandmother – the Ten, the Mother – the Nine. The Nun – the Eight, the student – the Seven and I – “the worthless Six”. Finally, the dog, the monkey, the toad and the magician’s props are the small numbers of the fortunetelling tarot cards. Therefore, all together we are… Fate itself!

“You, as always, did not understand anything, but, in fact, I showed you on the sly,” said the gentleman to his companion. “It was just deserts for the treasurer. The “Dominican” is the same type of self-righteous man as the Fakir is. Both are from the same gang. While the second regaled the treasurer with the cold dish, the toad, the first cut the old goat’s purse. And that was a hot dish of revenge.”

At the mention of the purse, a wave of fear engulfed me, and my knees buckled. My transmitter had disappeared! Didn’t always guard my purse-liked transmitter?  Moron! The Fakir, like a real hypnotist brought the audience into a trance with his shiny ball, and his partner cut the purses of the opinionated gapers…

“What was this all for? For my pride? For a jump of a thousand years?”

…There were no longer any signs of those swindles near the wall…  And there wouldn’t be! Finding the transmitter in the sewage is now like catching a wind in a field. Where can I go? Who can I expect to help me? And what are my skills? Creating a habitat for animals? Drawing the mutants and symbiotes of the Reservation?

There is only one thing for me to do: to become the same as they are – greedy, rude, cruel, lustful, duplicitous, and then to atone for my sins till the end of my days. To find Antonius – robbed, as I was – to become his indispensable helper, his adopted son. How long has he left? Seven years for seven lashes? To bury him. To find Aleyt. To marry her. To suffer the rest of my life from hopelessness, the inability to change fate. To wait for the end, to pray for rescue and to draw. To draw all that I see and remember. Lord, I will paint them – such horrors indeed!

I will not be able to leave records, diaries, signatures, self-portraits, dates…

Never in my life will I be able to go beyond this city. What if…

I think it is pointless to send signals. It’s only in the beginning, after a shipwreck, you are relentlessly pulled back to the familiar and kind environment that you called home. Then you get used to the situation, and everything that seemed strange, like a nightmare, gradually invades your reality, becomes itself your reality, displaces your former pictures of life. And you ask yourself a question: “What if that you imagine as a delusion is real life, and the mental images are just a dream? A good, strange, magical dream that recurs less and less often…”

 Yet once in my life I will allow myself to break… but, by the way, what rule will I break? I will leave my self-portrait, the only one, not counting the numerous little figures among whom no one will ever recognize me. Maybe some of my old friends will understand that this is I and take me away. No, that is self-deception. They will not understand and will not take me away – too many links with the new reality have already formed. But I do not regret it. Life has not been lived in vain, and let my self-portrait be my only greeting to you – those who are thinking of me, living in a different time. But even the self-portrait, like all my works, I will not sign. Let them ironically call me with by holy name – Hieronymus. Well, now look into my “blameless” eyes…