About a certain return

Part 4

– The Great Lady doesn't exist. She's just an image.

– Oh, followed a roar of horror!

What a blasphemy! The Angry Face of the Great Lady replaced the Custom Face.

– The Great Lady is the screen of a robbers' gang.

– Oh!

– The Great Lady is a hooker, a slatternly, a nuisance...

At each blasphemy the spectator heard only a beep. I knew what the beep meant. I had the privilege to hear that for real.

– Your Honor, I fully deny these defamations. They are put wrongly in my charge. I am a simple person, a stranger to any ambition, I don't want anything from life and I thought it didn't want anything from me...

– Silence, silence, please, Silence-e-e... Guilty, your mouth's powers to speak had been taken back.

– Now what! What have I done?!

And it came like a ghost, so sudden and precisely that I didn't have time to react. An arm, a person, I didn't even see. He put a bandage over my mouth, over my face. How can I save me now when my right to defend myself has been denied? I set on the floor and laid down on my belly.

– Let the second witness come in!

He also was a man, after his voice... according to his voice...

– What's your name?

– The name? I cannot carry in memory my name amidst the Closed Walls... May my name be restored in The Great Temple...

– Unbelievable, sounded the voice of Lisa M! Unbelievable, Your Honors!

It seems it was me again, maybe another projection, an image of mine...!

– Let the third and last witness come in!

It was quiet. I heard someone stumbling...

– Who are you? What's your name?

– I am, grumbled the Voice... I am the Great Divinity that can reproduce itself... because I am... Yesterday and... I know Tomorrow and I am... the living Integration of all the powers of the past and all the potential of the future...

– Take away the mad man!

The man started at low voice and ended up shouting.

– The direction I aim is the Ordinance of the Worlds... You, that follow to join me, come to meet me...!

– Take away the mad man!

– Stretch your arms towards me...!

I was taken, lifted and carried away, a straight jacket had been pulled over my head, my hands were tied and somebody, I later saw he was a member of the Great Jury, cut the bandages in front of my eyes and mouth.

– Your Honor, please, allow me to defend myself.

– What can your defence consist of, when you alone have accused yourself?

– Don't abandon me to the executioner's axe! Don't pull out my hearts! I'm like you...

Horror: Oh!

– Smell this person.., said Lisa M! Does he seem to be one of you?

– But it's really me... Oh you Truth-Justice, listen! I pulled out all the Evil... I didn't cause any suffering to others, I didn't use violence against my own kin, I didn't replace the justice by the injustice, mix with the evil ones, I committed no crime, I didn't force people to excessively work for me, I didn't weave any plot, I didn't steel, I didn't use any drugs...

I spoke out forty-two such negations. Each of them should be addressed to one of the people wearing funny wigs that seemed obviously bored in their stools with inflatable cushions. The memory wasn't the ace in my sleeve (what a foolish idea! I had no ace in my sleeve) so I was reading from my notes on pieces of cardboard. A young woman kept changing them once I finished the sentence. And I was telling aberrations:

– ... I didn't tip the balance in my favor, I didn't take the milk from the snakes' mouths, I didn't fish with dead fish, I didn't eat maggots...

Over!

– The Great Jury is redrawing to confer.

The Great Jury, called also The High Hierarchies, Saints alive with unknown identity, elected by the General Council, in a secret way... Why are they not supposed to be known, why they don't even know each other...? A corruption matter, probably...

– The Grand Jury has conferred... The convict has been found...?

– The accused has been found guilty of crime against the family, the society and the humanity. He will be sacrificed on the Great Lady's altar, which is one of science. His spirit will be embellished so that it could offer not hatred and tension but collaboration and certainty.

"Shit! What shall I say! Damn you, untouchables!"

– Executioner, carry out the sentence!

– What sentence? Where are the scales? How are my sins weighted?

And the big one with the hatchet came close, got me by my bandages, and flung my head on the desk of the accused bar...