About a certain return

Part 9

The fork deeply penetrated into, like in a jelly. It must have been something premeditated, I become clear later. Nobody intervened, he was, after all, the head of the government, wasn't he? What did Marcel want to tell me? Maybe nothing. I was a plot's victim! That's it, undoubtedly! I was thinking about the newspaper article, large heading, in black, on the first page: THE HORRENDOUS MURDER COMITTED BY A NATIONAL LIBRARY CLERK. I became famous. Isn't this everybody's aim, from the moment he understood how society work?

With my legs tied up, my hands and neck bounded together between two wooden pillars, dressed in clothes made out of a rough material, blind folded, I had been transported far away from the city, somewhere, at the "superior levels". The death penalty is a common think for "socio-psychopaths", needless to say what lays in store for political assassins as myself. After all, they have been trailed and condemned. I don't know if you have read The Ancient Faith Book. There is a passage that condemns us, and roughly contains the following phrase: Among people, there are some guided by The Great Lady; there are others destined to perdition...

"Justice" is a divine quality, what can man do? They took me in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, as I had no idea where I was. A winding road, with ups and downs, bends to the left and to the right, a huge maze that seemed endless. I thought they will starve me to death, when, tide up as I was, I've been dropped down from a certain height, and only by chance I didn't break my neck, but only my bottom. Somebody dragged me to a bed and pricked my hand. A substance has been injected to me, then I've been dragged, by the clothes, into a room, they pulled off all the bands blocking my limbs and head. I moved away the cloth from my eyes. The cell was lit just enough to prevent me from knocking against the walls. On the floor, by the door, there was a wooden trough with some grey paste inside that might have been some kind of food, I tried it with disgust but also with hunger. It was eatable. Suddenly I saw the room stretching and shinning lights down and up. I started to run, though I was standing in the same place. I couldn't stop, I kept on running and the room was increasing and decreasing...I kept on running like this for quite q while, a whole day ,I believe, if not more.("A whole day"! As if I knew how time goes by?) And then, gradually, I lost speed and finally stopped. I was afraid not to start again, but a new feeling got possession of my mind: I felt I passed from one time to another. I wasn't aware of what was happening around me, I only knew I am in another time. Impossible to explain it in words. Then I was taken out of the room. Two men dropped me on a bed and I felt something shaking all my body and short-circuiting my brain. I understood electroshocks were in question. The men torturing me were saying something, but all I could hear was: "You've killed your father, you've killed your father!" Then I received another injection. I fainted away. I woke up in the same room. I felt terribly weak. I fed myself with that undefined substance and the nightmare has been replayed. I received more than one hundred electro shocks and had been in a coma for many days. For how long? A lot. I didn't know who I was any more, like a baby, they taught me how to use the toilet ... I was urinating on me... Finally, they got me out of the cell and took me somewhere else, and simply set me free. I found out my name. I had a number tattooed on my skin: 400-155. This is all we remain after life, some personal codes, and nothing more.

I knew something about the world I came in. I knew, by example, that I was part of a family. I also knew the unwritten rules of the community. It seems it wasn't polite to ask directly the name of the speaker, or ask about another member of the community... It was appreciated to introduce myself. I wasn't supposed to say to somebody; "hey" or "hello", or another common thing, but to simply utter his clan name or the kindred relationship between us. "How can this be?" I asked myself in fear, before seeing Dirac, a chap with beard, with more width than length, I mean rather fat, with a big belly, dressed in a similar way as myself, which was the fashion over there: Craftsman, he told me, craftsman is how I'm called. Our clan is Dariel. Mind you, because we have a lot of enemies and it won't do you good not to be able to make a distinction between the members of the tribe. We'll call you Dart. We all work at the steel melting workshop.