Once upon a time, there was a city bathed by the waters of the Danube River. A city meant to lead that empire that spread its tentacles from the very core of Europe towards the east. A reference to culture, art, science that could have conquered the world.
Now that city was nothing more than the ghost of what once was, still breathing from its former glory even when it implied suffocating. Mozart and Freud reduced to touristic assets, same with the Habsburg dynasty and their dramatic romances.
A shared destiny with Prague.
His consciousnesses flew over all his knowledge on that city whose streets he was wandering: Maria Theresa, the Battle of Austerlitz, Freud's psychoanalysis, the Vienna Circle, the civil war of 1934, the Anschluss... yet it swiftly departed from those old history lessons, too agitated to be able to focus on serious cogitations, those concepts, and events converging in a chaotic spiral of the absurd. Johann felt surprisingly stupid, and he was planning on enjoying every bit of that sensation, the lack of invasive trains of thoughts, obsessive over-analyses, focus. Neither his inner world nor the reality ahead offered enough stimuli to matter anymore. Could there be a sweeter sensation?
Weeks had turned into months and the memories lost so long ago returned to their legitimate proprietor, in the shape of vivid images full of color and darkness, of the same streets -narrow and chaotic paths-, the low contiguous buildings of pastel colors, the paving stones under his feet. He was wandering the same places again, like many other nights before, but for the very first time, he was attacked by a sensation of familiarity, of a lifetime trapped within.
And then a bolt of lightning annihilated that flow of thought, the sudden reminiscence offered with lethal clarity, that he was no longer in Prague, that the period of chase had ended with a second bullet and the familiar solitude had been softened by the entertainment of what Anna represented. It had been years from those chases of memories and ghosts of a childhood and a whole universe in between.
The simple realization that those streets didn't belong to Prague, not even Czechia... but Vienna. Austria. And sign in German had been necessary for him to remember.
Once upon a time, there was a city known as Vienna that felt just like another Prague, but it only made sense, tied by common history of German, central European culture, bloodbaths, annihilation, and more wars than humankind could reminiscence. He had never been to Austria before, just its former imperial territory that now represented Czechia, and Czechoslovakia back in his childhood. It was a curious thought, that neither Czechoslovakia nor East Germany existed anymore, places that represented so much of their lives, of many others like them who were forced -or gifted- with the era of post-soviet capitalism.
Enough of history lessons. Better to concentrate on the scenario ahead, the reality entangled. It could store some interesting experiences he was willing to explore if only to pass the time and test what was he capable of in that sweet mediocre state of mind.
His footsteps echoing through those empty streets he walked and walked, not knowing exactly where to go but following some instinct he preserved from past times. Maybe future ones.
His head raised toward the black skies like they could offer an answer to his clueless sensation of time and space. Vienna was just another Prague, the distinction between them turning meaningless: Czechia, Austria, east, west, past, future... could the skies, the angels promised beneath, talk to him like they had never done?
Could they tell him what time it was?
He expected only silence and his head lowered again after a few minutes. He had lost the track of time long ago and he supposed it to be sometime around 4 am.
No one was to be seen. Not a single soul. His own footsteps being the sole witnesses of yet another nocturnal adventure. His usual answer towards insomnia.
Johann walked, step after step, astonished and surprisingly annoyed by the uncomfortable feeling of wearing heels, the tension in his legs building up until they turned numb. Now he registered the same sensation even when his clothing reminded him of nothing of that time. That city, that time of day, however, were designed as a reminiscence of that unnerving fashion choice that high heels were.
Even if he wasn't in Prague anymore.
With such a memory he felt obliged to dedicate a brief thought to that naïve detective that once represented her love interest, whose dates ended with the same silent walks across the same city. He had never checked whether he was still alive and suddenly he was eager to find out more about that man. From what he had been told, the pass of the monster through Czechia was buried even deeper than the one in Germany so there was a chance that he was still looking for his Anna.
No, his sister had been given access to that tape from his childhood so it meant he had possibly been able to meet the real Anna Liebert. He promised himself to ask her again about that reunion, whether it ever happened, and if so, how awkward did it go. He was still fascinated by those human interactions that surpassed all the complexity and absurdity he was capable of handling.
He was indeed in his stupidest moments if he required such a long time to link those two facts together. The idea of surviving, like his sister wanted, but as a drunkard, started forming in the deepest corner of his mind as a plausible plan.
Yet something deviated his attention to the outside world, again, some light and sounds and voices too happy to be sober at that time of the day. Indeed he had reached, after what felt like years, a street crowded by happy people and the factory of that their happiness: bars.
The effects of the alcohol had mostly disappeared but the aftertaste was there in the shape of... he couldn't be so sure he wasn't drunk anymore. Maybe it was just the dizziness that had evaporated, leaving all the rest for him to enjoy.
And that was the tale of how Johann found himself in a foreign country, in an unknown city at a random street staring at a bar entrance that just looked like the one he used to frequent in Prague, even if the comparison failed to work. Even if that wasn't Prague anymore. He just waited, embracing the sensation of being a nameless monster once again, if only for an instant, understanding what had been his personal conception of happiness.
He missed nothing and no one, but his strongest concept to nostalgia was the bulldozing desire to permanently go back to that state of mind. The one he mostly enjoyed in Munich.
Thus he made a resolution, simple, fun, devoid of any danger if not for himself. Until the sun raised again, he was going to become again that nameless monster, enjoy the fantasy he had been deprived of for so many months.
'Happy birthday to myself.'
He wanted something. A gift of sorts. He hadn't celebrated anything close to a birthday in the last twenty years and now it seemed like a good plan, a treat to go back to that state of mind that represented the epitome of his recklessness.
Better to stay out of trouble, though, even if that meant to avoid any sort of social interaction. In fact, that mere thought made him feel even happier!
The plan changed again, and again and again on a fraction of a second until reaching calm waters, just like the ones that suddenly appeared in front of him.
The Blue Danube, in all its serene splendor, exposed as he reached the end of a street, under his feet. Johann realized then that he had never seen the ocean nor any lake before, only wastelands and labyrinths of concrete. Never water -not in that overwhelming immensity.
In front of him, the river divided the land in two, like an unbeatable force of nature, making it difficult to identify the shapes on the other shore, like erasing the world beyond. If only he could submerge the wasteland within to form those calm waters instead.
Suddenly interested -just one more time- in those surroundings, he looked down to that tiny path built a few meters from the water, following its stroke, that seemed to remain a few meters lower than the rest of the city. Finding some stairs accessing that path, his eyes followed them back up to find that they started close to him.
So he left the few laughs and chit chats behind, step after step until he was close enough to be able to drown. Being engulfed by those dark waters was fancied as the most pleasant of the deaths.
He decided to walk west, back to Germany.
Johann had just turned 27, -his body-, from which he had been conscious during 23. A few months less, actually.
More than three years asleep and not a single dream to eventide of that time, because being in a coma wasn't quite the same. He had been completely dead during that time, reduced to a motionless doll that required the same care as a baby. A tool to offer solace to all those tormented souls he had created, Anna and Dr. Tenma being the only ones to enjoy it. The fantasy recreated, of a demigod in its quest for obliteration, shattered by the sight of a weak body that had nothing of particular, neither disturbing nor angering. Not even beautiful, not in any immortal facet.
The nameless monster he missed had been killed on that bed, under those stares. What was left, a nameless man with no past, no future, and what was much worse: no purpose.
Anna argued happiness being enough of a lifetime goal but he had never understood joy as an objective but as a collateral compensation instead, one that required a greater scheme. She was never going to change his mind, so most of her attempts to make him understand were meant to fail unless she became more open-minded, creative. No, Johann required plans, ambitions, dreams even if they were shaped as nightmares, to direct his existence.
He remembered the starting point, vaguely, the moment his childish mind had designed that resolution like a monster on its own right that had consumed so much more of him that she could ever imagine.
'To put the entire world at her feet.'
Overly ambitious and vague by then, he had eventually perfectioned it until the point of becoming a strategic path of causes, consequences, and deadlines, because his dreams always came with timestamps.
Then, as existence was transformed so did reality entailed, and Johann followed. He always followed.
'To be the last person left in this world.'
Less ambitious, equally vague. Still megalomaniac, but by that time he had understood the scope of his own mind. There was no desire for survival entailed in that one, though. The requirements of violence, although pleasant, pursued a desire for silence, safety, tranquility... and ultimately solitude. He had required that level of isolation and walking along that river in the middle of the night was a reminder of that familiar sensation.
If only they were the only people left in the whole world -he usually wished.
A fairy tale in a library had represented yet another depth level in that abyss.
'To get one's memories back.'
A true mistake he was reckless enough to underestimate. The trade-off associated deserved rejection, so much pain, so much fear yet the real memories so scarce, so meaningless. Finally becoming so alien to himself.
Yet the metamorphosis had been powerful instead, his goal-driven existence turning meaningless, the fast cadence of the amnesia being converted into a bleeding void, the anger that fueled all his strength transformed into nothing more than misery.
Which was the purpose of making him understand his own mistake at that point, in that abandoned house where Nina had flung at him more unerring words than bullets? Was that an act of piety, maybe? Or her way to actually kill him instead, in her most twisted version of revenge?
Anna brandished honesty as the most precious virtue, in that blind faith whose damaging scope spared no one. She needed no other weapon to kill him, he was certain.
He had had yet a final goal left, turned into a last wish.
'To achieve the perfect suicide.'
It proved to be an easier goal, being more of a state of mind rather than an act itself. No one understood though, neither her so she came to him in a death wish. Yet it had failed from the very beginning, requiring an additional sacrifice he wasn't willing to conduct: her life. Nina had been free to die with him if desired. Sparing her destroyed all his chances of success yet he pursued that goal meticulously knowing that whatever was the failure that time it would be good enough.
Eight months and still nothing.
'To simply exist.' He refused to embrace it as a goal. It wasn't his choice, though.
And that was the epitome of his new existential crisis. Without a goal in mind, Johann was nothing more than... nothing.
Goals had always come to him unnoticed, shaped as a mixture of conclusions and sensations over an experience that had redefined his existence. Yet nothing had redesigned him like her forgiveness, nothing had changed him like being together again and his mind remained blank, deadly so.
He wanted a purpose. He had no ambition left for this last one, taking care of her house and the house chores served him as well as dominating the European Central Bank.
Could the angels throw one purpose at him instead of the clock he had asked for?
The water felt surprisingly cold in his ankles, rapidly wetting his trousers until that freshness reached his knees, the fabric suddenly attached to his skin. His figure then remained motionless, eyes focusing on the sinuous shapes of minuscule fishes around him, the ones much bigger also roaming around him in their carefree trajectories. Him standing in the middle of that ecosystem and nothing changing, him drowning in those waters and the event passing by. Him dying and the world remaining unaltered.
There was some comfort worth to be drawn from that perspective. A perfect suicide on its own right, the sheer unimportance of the destiny faced by whatever was contained on that body.
Death felt near, yet not imminent, thus he left the happiness offered by its perspective linger, knowing it won't go any further than his knees.
"... god's sake are you OK? Hey, can you hear me?"
For the first time, his attention registered a voice that had been annoying him for some time now. He turned completely, hands on his back, wondering why someone had to interrupt him.
"Sorry?" He offered his best smile even when the chances were few that it would be seen, as he barely recognized the figure of that intruder.
He was an average man, that he knew from his voice, and his shape had nothing of particular, wearing what it seemed a plain suit. Not an interesting appearance so far.
"Are you OK? Aren't you planning on...?"
Johann's smile dried on his lips. He wasn't prepared to deal with the drama of being considered a depressed suicidal. So he decided to play it dumb.
"I was looking at the fishes, there are so many. I could barely see them from the shore so, here I am." Showing that energetic tone probed to be surprisingly easy. The Russian accent appeared without much thought. "The water feels so nice... so refreshing." He suddenly raised his arms, stretching them, like a puppet coming back to life.
The angels decided he had enough of the fantasy of suicide. He might agree on that. It all depended on how entertaining that new encounter was.
The man seemed to relax at his casual answer, which also helped Johann to switch back to that carefree state of mind.
Offering a final gaze to his new friends, he said them goodbye with a hand gesture before walking back to the shore, finally standing right next to that stranger.
Had he casted some sort of spell to invoke that man in front of him?
Because, even if he was in Vienna, and not in Prague, that man was indeed that young detective he had devoted some random thoughts on that strange night.
Jan Suk.
"You freaked me out! Glad it was just a misunderstanding..."
Sadly, the spell broke as rapidly as that man talked again and his German proved him a proficient speaker, while the actual detective had shown heavy difficulties while speaking that language. Jan had been so eager to learn it, anyway, once he had discovered his love interest was actually German. And she had been willing to teach him. A pity their relationship had finished a few days later as he decided to become a fugitive, leaving him with a mediocre German. Johann had even considered visiting him in prison if given a chance. He was still curious to see what a prison looked like.
They might look alike in a certain way, but the resemblance wasn't that remarkable after all, which proved incredibly disappointing. He had questions to ask after all.
"Oh no, no... my only problem is insomnia, hence these late-night walks." His head turned towards the water, dreamy.
"Yeah, I get you. Damn, sleeping these last days is getting impossible..." The man, who was rather brunette instead of blond, smiled then, in the same way Suk used to do.
He decided to thank the angels anyway, offering him a promising alternative. Johann decided to stay optimistic, if only for that night.
Suddenly the man grabbed a pack of cigarettes from some pocket, bringing one to his own lips.
"Do you want?" Johann looked at the box for a few seconds in that complete silence that only portrayed his mind momentary getting blank.
Accepting served no clear purpose but he did anyway. After offering him the lighter he did the same with his cigarette and both men ended up standing next to each other, watching the calming waters in front of them.
He had smoked before, several times, -enough to get used to it-, anticipating it might come in handy in some social events. And it had, even when he slightly despised that smell. Johann could derive some pleasure from alcohol but never of cigarettes, and that clear smoke coming out from his lungs.
"Is it because of a woman?" The man started saying after some moments of contemplation. "Your insomnia, I mean..."
He contemplated the dark waters. It was a woman, it always had been, mother, sister... and with equal probability, they could have been men. 'L'enfer, c'est les autres', it was.
What an utterly uninteresting question.
"No." He turned around, bored, ignoring the confused expression of that man who dared not to be Jan Suk.
Once again he was on that path walking towards nowhere and everywhere, having lost all sense of orientation years ago. He had no goal to start with, so he just had to walk.
And in the silence of the night, his mind turned noisy, bringing back the now familiar voice of hers, who had dared to question his solitude.
*'Your whole existence can be summarized as an abandoned, infuriated child crying out for attention, from his sibling, from his doctor, from every foster parent you ever had. You are silently screaming, all the time, for love or hate, it doesn't matter, because above anything, you feel, always have felt, abandoned.'*
Her words were carved in fire in his mind, yet remained incomprehensible. Was he seeking attention?
*'Sehen Sie mich! Sehen Sie mich!'* He hadn't pursued her attention when he killed the Fortners. He wanted her to remember, to snap out of that mediocre fantasy of normality and realize...
What she had left behind.
*'Sehen Sie mich,...'*
What she really was.
He had never forced her to chase, to aim to kill, to confront him like that. He hadn't, he didn't need to because she made that decision all by herself, but now he was left to wonder, what would have he done if... if only she had mourned, the Fortners, leaving all the rest buried?
Was he looking for her attention?
*'Sehen Sie mich!'*
Her acknowledgment, attention, was a means to an end, a tool to trigger her pain and fear. He wanted revenge, not attention. He had no idea what to do with that attention.
It had been strange, being remembered by someone else. Thinking that he existed in someone else's thoughts. Unsettling even.
He wasn't sure he liked it, even. Being a ghost offered him control over the narrative of his own existence and now she lived to shatter those tales as soon as they deviated from reality. She knew the truth, a part of it at least.
*'But you are special. You want to be accepted by someone who is aware of your nature. You want someone to face you like a human being while knowing you are actually a monster. And it has been me, only me, who offers you that.'*
She had been right on that matter, simply so. He had grown tired of that same myth he had worked so hard to create -existence such as either a man or a monster-, but lacking the permission to embrace both. He had represented a human too wholesome to be stained by any impurity of this world, a monster too abhorrent to possess any glimpse of a soul. He perfectly knew that duality solely served moral purposes, but he wondered, between those extremes, where was he standing?
Was he 10% human, 90% monster? 1% human, 99% monster? 50% and 50%? He had been told so often that it was his intelligence what made him truly dangerous, his education. His charisma. Didn't it mean that in terms of his moral compass he represented a rather mediocre monster, lesser than the Baby, Čapek, Bonaparta? Maybe even Roberto.
Was he just an intelligent man turned into a bland monster?
He wanted to understand, more than anything, his own nature. All within himself, all dimensions. Beyond the labels, patches, and treatments of doctors, instead of healing, he pursued knowledge.
That would be a worthy purpose, if only it felt like one.
Yet sadly, so sadly, he already knew the answer, of sorts. No dragon nor even a man, but a broken one, so brutally shattered that he had never been able to properly resemble the resulting smithereens, becoming in the process an agonizing body and a maddened soul. Only his intellect remaining fairly unaltered.
Because that's what the monster was, his mind turned into a weapon, mercilessly designed so no one could shatter him again.
Surprisingly he had been triumphant, which might mean he wasn't such a mediocre monster after all. Or again, that he was smart enough to properly weaponize his own monstrosity in the most effective approach. He didn't know.
Did it mean his design had been a success, that both mother and father possessed seeds monstrous enough in the shape of DNA? Was that, a successful experiment, to be metabolized into an uncontrollable beast, so easily?
Johann understood the theoretical approach of Bonaparta's experiment, of course, yet many of the choices that man had main remained shady at the very least, approaching chaotic absurdity. Love made him a mad man instead.
He understood he was meant to become a born leader, meticulously designed and educated, an answer to the need for better leaders for the broken regimes that were the Soviet republics of the 70s and 80s. The East was collapsing and they needed people to restore the trust. He just represented the Czech version of a much bigger scheme, as there probably had been similar projects in Poland, Hungary, Russia.
In times of chaos, the world needed strong leaders. Hitler was the savior of a crumbling post-Versailles Germany, Stalin had collected the results of the Red October, Edvard Beneš had been the face and strength of the Czech martyr democracy against totalitarism. Johann had extensively studied the most notorious leaders of 20th century Europe, from farmers turned into partisan leaders to aristocrats turned into politicians. He was meant to lie among them one day, that's what he had been told.
It all had started with a simple eugenics experiment, yet a rather mediocre one. Communism couldn't afford the mistake of deviating towards any ideal of racial supremacy and thus dangerously converge towards its complementary form of socialism, actively opposing any idea or racial supremacy. That's why he was, -they were-, the children of smart, highly educated and attractive people, yet those parents had nothing of special, just a collection of generally positive traits with no concrete target, thus representing such a considerable percentage of the Czech population. Czechoslovakia was full of smart college girls, handsome soldiers.
Free of any racial purity ideals, Johann was only required to face a few restrictions in order to be eligible as a born leader. He had to be a man in the still-sexist communist society as he had to be Caucasian in a European country. It was just a safer choice. A woman could be a leader, a foreigner too, still the risk wasn't worth that enormous monetary investment.
That what they did could barely be considered eugenics. Yet Johann felt rather grateful to nature for his physical appearance, the chance of having two conventionally attractive parents that bred conventionally attractive children.
Being considered handsome in the most classical way had proven to be a priceless asset, enough to make him question how much of his charisma was just the shape of his face. Being blond had been useful too, same with having blue eyes, little additions to those features. If given a choice, he would have just asked for a manlier appearance too, so he would have just looked more like that man who was their father.
Overall he was happy with being an attractive European man that was all he required to successfully navigate through any social circle, either the university campus or neo-nazi spheres. He had no problems blending in, standing out. End of the story.
Yet he had only required to walk through the streets of Prague to cross paths with more men and women that looked like both of them, to conclude that eugenics had been a waste of money and all they needed to do is pick beautiful and intelligent Czech children, instead of attempting a second-rate Lebensborn.
Once the babies had been produced, Bonaparta's experiment required a long term stagnation, one that represented just a modern approach of the already existing Spartan system, which meant that they were left a few years of mercy, the most demanding stages of childhood, to the mother, before tearing them from her care to become the property of the state, at the age of six.
The nazis failed in their Generalplan Ost, and so did the Greek polis centuries before. What was going to change now?
If only forcing their mother to choose had had any meaning in all that process. Bonaparta wanted a man, he knew and so did she. It wasn't a matter of him being smarter than her, or weaker or any other comparison his sister had been able to rationalize in order to move on. They wanted a leader thus they wanted a man. Then the question was, why force her to be the one to choose?
Johann suspected the answer, his own nature made him understand, as the most brutal way to demolish that little family they created. Regardless of the outcome, the children lost the love of their mother, lived to believe so. The mother was left unworthy of her own children, the love for whom she was forced to question. The simple possibility of being unloved had been enough to destroy them both. Bonaparta denied a peaceful existence to either the mother or the saved child, which meant the decision was planned to be meaningless from the very beginning. That a pathetic way to be deadly wounded.
Maybe he was wrong and the approach had been completely different. Maybe all Bonaparta wanted was to ask a much simpler question: would she submit to give up the son or resist and sacrifice the daughter?
The intentions of that puppeteer were never unveiled.
Bonaparta needed broken children, unwanted children, or those who felt as such to start the following process of brainwashing. Separated in their own personal hell they faced the same idea of rebirth, one in an unknown room and the other in their most familiar home. It had been the same, now it felt the same. Did it matter which one was unwanted?
Didn't it?
Only Kinderheim 511 had been the real success, a modernization of Bonaparta's ideas made by a more focused team of scientists, like Dr. Biermann, those goals were clear and systematic. Their approach, purely empiric. No one loved anyone there, that's why they succeeded.
Prague had represented a nightmare for him but the final blow to his soul had been inside that building in Berlin, its classrooms, dorms, basements... and all that he had experienced, witnessed, and endured in those three years.
That place where he had learned all he had ever needed to dominate, destroy... to survive.
He learned everything needed to learn: knowledge, skill, creed. Any alternative conception of education had proven a joke and the mediocre results obtained by Anna's life was the proof. If only she had been accepted to Kinderheim 511.
What an unfair world.
Johann was glad to be a considered a failure but he also wanted to be a success, and surpass all those expectations on the same monster they attempted to create. Probe to somebody that he was indeed, good enough.
Enough to be the absolute best.
Enough to make them proud of what he had become, that he happened to exist.
But instead, all he was offered was solitude, a leadership to none. If he couldn't lead the world, might instead destroy it.
Tilting his head, Johann observed the dark waters again, down below his hanging legs. A slight motion onward and everything would disappear.
He imagined his own body colliding with the water, exploding instead of drowning, transforming into a nebula of light for a few seconds, to disappear in that storm of dust and ashes.
Rotting, however, what a pathetic choice.
Leaders shouldn't face such mortal endeavors, instead, transcend... transcend to what, fame, glory, the idea of good itself?
He wasn't a leader after all, a human either, yet not quite nameless.
What was it, him? How would his death be? Was he able to die?
Was there death after all? Of what, part of him, all of it... none? Would it be the end of that eternal twilight, becoming an eternal night instead?
The water glowed under the moonlight, shaping the giant snake slithering under his feet, maybe at the search of a new home in the Alps.
If only they could blend and become one. It was only twenty meters, at most, a few seconds.
And then it would be over, a new beginning or an absolute death and both outcomes would be fine.
Everything would be fine.
Wouldn't it?
Once upon a time, there was a little fragment of the cosmos that had nothing of particular, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither terrifying nor insignificant. Its different elements following no particular trajectory, just avoiding collision, turning around, as there was nothing else to be.
Why, one must ask, is such fate just or virtuous?
'Because it is safe,' said one of the frogs swimming in the pond.
'Because it is simple,' said the frog crossing the bridge.
'Because there is nothing else to be,' said the rotting frog underground.
Anything else to a broken toy. And if he wasn't enough to be a dragon...
Johann wanted to be a nameless monster, again.
Slowly coming back to those his surroundings, he realized, with mild astonishment, that he could perfectly recognize his state of mind, that train of thought that had repeated so often during years of existence, and the ultimate conclusion:
Johann wanted to kill.
The hunger was back, and it didn't matter how long he tried to tame it, he was going to devour everything around him.
It was the end.