which I have dated to somewhere near 1349 A.D.; it mentions, amidst an account of an outbreak of plague in the town of Breece, that “a band of townsfolk had spied this day two figures, a man and a woman, prancing gaily on the outskirts of the village, wearing the feared Nose. They were driven out with fire clubs and a hail of stones.” Mesmus goes on to say that the appearance of figures wearing the Nose continues-sometimes there are two figures mentioned, sometimes three: a man, woman and small child; the text is partly destroyed and confusing-throughout the reign of the plague, abruptly terminating with the last case of the disease, although there is one cloudy passage toward the end of the treatise (which, as a sidelight, deals mainly with weather) mentioning that a “nosed person” was spotted in the church bell tower intermittently for some time afterward.
There is, actually, a case for the Cult’s being traced to well before this time; scant evidence and brief mentions exist that might date it to the Egyptian dynastic era. There is a legend that one of the noses itself was found in the burial chamber of Ramses II, though there is no surviving physical evidence or corroborating testimony to support this.
After Jacobus Mesmus, accounts of the Cult become more frequent. A figure wearing the Nose appears in one of Brueghel’s triptychs; there are several appearances of Cult members in the work of Bosch, as might be expected. There is also, curiously, an appearance of a figure bearing the Nose in a little-known (and by reason of the appearance of the adornment, thought to be spurious) painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: a tiny grinning figure, peeking out from behind a child holding a red parasol, is seen wearing a Nose utilizing a strap to keep it upon its face. The story is that the young girl in the painting was the daughter of M. Ebrezy, a prominent minister, and that the girl died mysteriously soon after posing for the artist.
There are mentions of the Nose in the works of Maupassant; Emily
There is a false, and dangerously misleading, conception that the Nose is a modern concoction, that it was not only invented for the foolish pleasure of children and childlike adults, but that it was promoted for this use alone, and for the further and more arcane uses to which it is currently being put by the modern Cult. It must be understood that the Nose is not only an ancient instrument, but that its use can be traced back nearly to the dawn of recorded history (see my opening remarks). The Nose has doubtless gone through periods-it might be hypothesized that these periods were ones of relative calm and social and religious stability-where it has been relegated to the position of toy. It has been determined, though, that these times of tranquility have always been rather brief, and, further, that the Nose has always regained its position of mysterious authority-and of feared nebulosity.
Such a period is, of course, where we find ourselves at the moment.
I might add at this point that my interest in the Cult is not a recently flowering one; I have been gathering references to it and carefully formulating my theories for many years.
FOR THE RECORD, MY interest was sparked during the waning months of the free world’s involvement in the Vietnam War. At that time I was a special attache aligned with a covert arm of American intelligence, checking black-and-white photographs taken by spies and insurgents behind Communist lines-these were photos smuggled out of prisoner-of-war camps and such. I might also add that this was a period in which I was seeking to forget an unfortunate incident in my personal life: my young spouse, understandably lonely due to my lengthy absence, took up with another man and had a child by him. I sought solace by immersing myself in my work.
I began to notice in some of the photos I handled a recurring and curious phenomenon. Here and there, tucked in a corner or peering out from behind a barracks, was a peculiar figure wearing what seemed to be a false nose upon its face. Often the figure was identifiably male; at other times it appeared to be a female, or even a child. Many prisoners of war at that time, due to malnutrition and concurrent emaciation, were barely identifiable by their gender-or their age-so it must be remembered that any sort of positive identification was difficult. Many of the nose-wearing figures appeared beside, or within (though they were apparently not dead) mass graves.
I put these photographs aside, thinking that, though there was little here to interest my superiors, there might yet be something to investigate further.
I began to dream of figures, birdlike, resembling Bosch’s horrid hell beasts, wearing false, beaklike noses.
My collection of photographs grew. I realized that as the scenes of horror increased-by this time we were receiving covert daily pictures from death camps holding Americans and Vietnamese Buddhists-the number of nose-bearing figures increased. In one photograph-one I keep to this day folded in my wallet-a man, woman and child, in a long line of tired and bleakly hopeless prisoners, most of them in tatters of clothes hanging on barely enough bones to stand, being led meekly to an open pit by machine gun-bearing guards, have turned their faces toward the camera, three in a row, and are smiling a death’s-head smile. There seems to be a bit more meat on their bones than on those in front and in back of them.
They each wear the Nose.
OTHER ACTIVITIES SOON SAVED me from complete absorption in the manner of these curious photographs, and it was not until well after the war’s resolution, after I had settled in Montreal, far away from my ex-wife, her son and husband (who traveled extensively) that I came across a small bundle of the grainy pictures in a box (the above-mentioned photo was among them) and all of my former interest was rekindled. I began to search other sources-having a bit of influence, due to my war service, in being able to access materials not easily available by the public-and began to come across other photos taken in other sectors of the war in which figures bearing the Nose appeared.
I then broadened my research, and found similar artifacts among World War II memorabilia. I came across one precious bit of evidence (alas, recently lost to fire) that depicted a Third Reich rally in which two separate nosed figures could plainly be discerned. I remember this photo clearly, because one of the figures stood a few scant feet from Hitler himself, and grinned maliciously at the camera.
Eventually, my interest once again waned, until I picked up one morning in 1979 a London newspaper that contained a news-service photo on the front page presenting the dead body of the assassinated president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee. To the right of the body, barely visible in the deep background, was a figure with the Nose on its face.
I immediately researched other photos that were taken at the time but came up with nothing useful.
However, another reference turned up in a photograph of a train derailment that killed forty-five passengers in Ohio the same week: among the twisted metal a head could be seen poking through with the false appendage attached to it by a thin silver strap. The figure it belonged to, which was surrounded by dead commuters, was clearly alive.
I began to comb picture morgues and newspaper files, turning up hundreds of photos with similar figures in them. Most depicted disasters or near disasters; I began to notice that the number-and demeanor-of the figures often depended on the amount of destruction that surrounded them. Their faces glowed with pleasure in ratio to the amount of mayhem and carnage. This was by no means a strictly quantifiable thing, but the correlation, in general, seemed to exist.
Most of these photos, unfortunately, have also been destroyed by fire.
I began to notice small, easily missed references to the Nose, or the Cult of those wearing the Nose, in literature, and naturally broadened my research to include that area also, as I have already mentioned.
I had apparently stumbled onto something that had gone nearly undetected by the general populace, something that had stayed just outside the general consciousness since the beginning of recorded history. Here was a sect so arcane, nefarious and secret (a kind of truly devilish Freemasonry?) that no more than widely scattered references to it remained, or had ever existed. There were no prime source materials; the only evidence to point to its existence were the photos few and far between and a symbol-the Nose-so thoroughly steeped in the general notion of tomfoolery as to virtually ensure safety from detection.
The next step, of course, was to search for the modern remnants of the Cult.
My task of discovery proved to be a long and difficult one. It would take me days to recount the numerous blind alleys and dead ends I encountered; the false leads, misinformation (deliberate, some of it), the intrigue, deception, the attempts (yes) on my life. For years, I meticulously pored over each scrap of evidence that might at last lead me to the discovery of the true aspect of the Cult.
Eventually, despite all attempts to stop me, I succeeded.
IN THE SPRING OF this year my obsession led me to Paris, where I hoped to meet with a man under the pyramidic shadow of the Eilel Tower. I was to wait at a certain cafe until three o’clock in the afternoon, and then I
