About a certain return

Part 15

And I collapsed... Then... it seemed I was taken through a narrow corridor, lit by torches, transported, lifted, pushed by some little men... A procession, I was pulled by the hand, people speaking to me and crowding around me like tadpoles, and I didn't know what's happening to me.

– Oh, ill willed and knavish that you are, you believe all that you're told is true and full of sins how you are, you could repent and get among the Holly Spirits? Ha-ha-ha! Gramon is utterly for sinners. However you repent, you cannot escape. You know the gramons adore with devotion the idol that lives amidst them, while you believe and adore only an image, and you think this is a great madness. You tell yourself that you have no proof for your faith, because nobody gone to other world has ever returned to tell the truth, so you must believe more the opposite of what it has been preached to you.

What did the sly chap mean? I felt like punching him on his bold and defaced head broadly protruding out of his mantle made out of a dirty cloth... But I couldn't move my hands: What do you want from me?

– Evil man that you are, got on the buffoon making wry faces and his face seemed to be burning like a red flame, black, red and... Do you really believe in the Great Lady? She has done you so much well and you offended her by neglecting to confess the sins committed against her, that you didn't want and don't want to admit. Look at them, they are all written in this book!

It was Mr Crow's book! Mr Crow? Mr Crow or...?

– Is it you Mr Black?

– Black, you're right... You should never hope to belong to someone else but I, otherwise, the Great Lady would not be a good judge. You have been hers by grace and mine by sin. You should have been hers naturally but your miserable will have cancelled your legitimate heritance and now you're mine, ha-ha-ha! Mine like war prisoner forever. Ha-ha-ha! The great goddess bought you by the charm of her passion; I took you from her through my temptation. You could have been her son, if you would have kept the orders but you are the Gramon's witness through you consent to disobey them. You didn't love the Great Lady, you cursed her and swear at her, you didn't celebrate her fests and didn't fast when asked, you didn't honour your Mother, you have been a murderer, in your wishes at least, if not by dead also, because, pushed by stinginess or by the angry revenge, you wished countless someone's death and looked for it willingly. You took someone else's good by force, by cheating or any other way and never get it back. You gave false evidence against your fellow man and made many other injustices and sins against the Great Lady's commands. You led a miserly and lazy life, full of envy, and, of course, all these are mortal sins. Moreover, you didn't fulfil not even one of the charity deeds that are so dear to the Great Lady and this would have tipped your balance on the Judgement Day. It's not a huge stupidity, you sinner that have committed so much evil, to hope that the Great Lady grace and mercy might fall upon you? You are due to the eternal fire, "you sinners"! The Judgement will be pitiless, as you had no mercy. Ha-ha-ha!

Am I imagining things? How is it possible for that ugly man to speak to me like that! And then, this one was not the one seen before!

– You're not frightening me, I shouted but my cry didn't have an echo.

The doubtful man with a mantle started to pity me:

– Oh, poor misfortunate, how much injustice must you feels now when so many goods that you struggled to gather, that you protected, will be scattered in someone else's propriety, lacking their meaning and your special care. Your fetish things that you believed to be luck charms, bringing you fortune, will become common in someone else's hands. Your daily habits, your hidden things, your life, as it was, full of deprivations, had its own beauty that you will be no longer able to feel. Your beloved friends, your woman and girl will remain to grieve and to be horrified to what might happen to them when you will no longer be there. What do you gain if you leave so soon?