Infernus

“But I will tell you what I think happened, if you like.” Her face lost its disinterested stare, he noted. This was obviously born of conviction.

“Uh, yes, I wish you would.”

“I think it was forced upon some young girl just blossoming into womanhood, or -”

“Or,” he interjected, “someone of a strict religious order.”

“You’ve thought of that one, too,” she said, smiling, then hurriedly chewed on a bit of fingernail.

“How cruel that — I’m just guessing on the method of transcribing, mind you — every time you sat down to write your lessons or perhaps to painstakingly write out a page of illuminated manuscript… and this came out!”

“But, in the unedited manuscript, which is impossible to imagine in print,” she added, “if this were the case, she either buried the manuscript herself, or kept it hidden from everyone. A woman writing this kind of literature up until modern times was considered unstable, at best, if they wrote this kind of thing. Worst-case scenario, she could have been burned at the stake or tortured, depending on what era she actually lived. If it were kept by a dark order, her identity could possibly have been kept secret.”

“You keep saying ‘she.’ Is that intentional?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute. Now, all of this is pure conjecture. It’s frustrating, because the mind naturally plows this ground, seeking answers. The person who received all of this, who was mentioned in the manuscript only briefly, is never referred to by name or sex.”

“In fact,” he said, excited, “the narrator seems genuinely surprised that there is a connection between himself and a stenographer at all. Isn’t that the impression you get?”

“Most definitely. To think that someone had to live with this for weeks… months. What if it came sporadically over the course of ten or twenty years?” She looked out the window to sigh and collect her thoughts for the next onslaught. “Imagine, if you will, but I suppose we will never possess what any of us could consider hard evidence. In fact, since the timeframe in which the manuscripts were carbon-dated; when they might have been written, and which years they speak of, which was all ‘future’ to the poor wretch — since all of that is impossible anyway, it’s unknowable with any degree of certainty, when it was written.

“The last hope I had, was to take the most innocent sample I could find from the first page to a handwriting analyst. All of the Koine-like Greek was printed, unfortunately for us, so I could not say clearly whether it was masculine or feminine.

“Given what we do know of handwriting is based on relatively modern samples. We can’t be sure they apply to someone living, say, a few thousand years ago.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Given it’s a safe bet to assume someone living a thousand years ago would be exposed to none of the modern conveniences we take for granted, male or female, their thought processes would be nothing like ours. They would be, for all intents and purposes, remarkably alien to us.” With some satisfaction she folded her hands in her lap, and smiled. Then brushed her pant leg. Again. For that invisible something she seemed to never locate.

“And?” he asked, suspecting this was only the beginning.

“Having said all that,” she said triumphantly, “I’ll still give you the impression we have. I consulted with three handwriting experts, two women and one man. Cities apart, and across a few months. Given all I’ve told you, they all three were positive that the handwriting, such as it was — and they knew nothing of the timeframes that I have discussed — was done by a woman. I only felt, having lived inside the manuscript for a few years, translating it, that it had a woman’s touch.

“One of the women and the man expressly said they felt sure ‘her’ life had been subjected to strict inner and outer discipline, possibly by a religious order.”

“Interesting,” he said. “The story is like a virus. And like the story, the sickness always spreads to the most negative possible outbreak. Think of a poor young nun, in another century, and every time she sits down, she envisions this.”

“Maybe it is interesting,” she said. Now that he knew a great deal about the book, she felt she could convey to him the most open, and weariest of looks, without being misunderstood. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bottle that rattled when she opened the cap, and dropped a pill into her palm. She swallowed it without asking for water. “This ‘book’ has made me so vulnerable, that I’m sure if we wouldn’t just do better without it ever having been found in the first place.”

“If,” he emphasized meaningfully, “you did discover it, and it wasn’t the other way around, I mean, think about it; haven’t you been more instrumental than all the others. Well, except for the person who wrote it in the first place, I mean. You and I are part of the final stage. We are seemingly working very hard to get it published. How do you know that we are not as much a part of this integral puzzle as all the rest?” He stopped, realizing how far he’d gone. “I’m sorry. I know how this probably sounds.”

“Well, I doubt it, but I know what you mean. The dark brotherhood disagrees with me. They feel that it was destiny, as you say. They have made sure that I cannot lose. If no publisher releases it, they say they would make me filthy rich forever — out of gratitude, you understand.”

“Hunh?”

“In their minds it was meant for me to find it, to translate it, to be contacted by them, to want to give them the book. You see, to them, this filth is their first truly holy book. I was told that my name will go down in their history books forever. Anyone harming me will feel the full intercontinental wrath of their assassins. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Fascinating!” he said, his eyes aglow.

“But what can protect me against my destiny? I’ve found myself in the book, you know. Don’t ask, I won’t tell you where. I pray you do not find yourself inside the book. Do yourself a favor, and don’t read it any more than you have. It’s a grave responsibility. That part is my private part of Hell. I told the dark brotherhood about my dreams.” She laughed a little kind of insane laugh. “They rejoiced. They said it guarantees my place in eternity. I actually hate them for saying that.”

There was silence between them for a minute, while demons walked over their graves.

“And you say, in your cover letter, that it took how long?”

A brief ache passed through her blond brow. “I’ve spent the last five years carefully, painfully translating the copious text.”

“But you said the text was Koine Greek. The ease of this -”

“It was very like Greek. I found that the Greek was almost like an evolved language that would have been used hundreds of years from now, maybe. Yet, still Koine, or common Greek.”

“Is there any proof of the existence of the two physicians mentioned in the manuscript?”

“I have discovered,” she began saying, as she looked through his tall windows, “much about them. They both attended the same medical schools. The short dark one did seem, according to those who went to school with him, to have an unreasonable sense of competition with the other. And, according to those who knew one or the other, or both, the tall muscular man was completely unaware of the other’s jealousy. That may have been part of the problem, as you have read. I tracked their last known location to the same hospital in Brussels.”

“And?”

“Their history ends there. We know that the short dark one followed the other one there for professional reasons, but neither one was ever heard from again.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely! The entire hospital caved in on itself; it crumpled into a great cavern that either opened up beneath it or was always there, waiting to consume whatever was built above it.”

“You never speak their names, do you? I noticed in your cover letter that you didn’t use both of their names in the book. Only one man’s name is used in the book. You -”

She looked through him. “That’s my business. When you’ve lived with this as long as I have, you may not be as eager to say either of their names.” She pointed at the box. “Maybe no one’s name ever again. A personal friend — a therapist — says I have become ‘acutely vulnerable’ to certain sounds, feelings, things; certainly cruel movies and the like, in her words. I agree with her.”

“You’re also sure about the dates recorded here?” he asked, again tapping the top of the manuscript box.