94
Sabir opened his eyes. He was blind. He closed them again.
It had all been true then. They had taken his eyes. He felt consumed by the darkness. He screamed.
Hands took hold of his body. He was carried out of the touj and into the open air.
Sabir threw his forearms across his face. It was dark. All was darkness. He could not bear to acknowledge his blindness.
Ixtab leaned forwards and rested her hands on his. ‘Try to open your eyes again,’ she said. ‘You will see. You are not blind. Trust me.’
‘No. No. I can’t.’
‘Open your eyes.’
Sabir was placed gently on the ground. He could smell the odour of the dust. Smell the bodies of those around him. He could identify each by their smell.
‘Where is Lamia? I need her.’
‘Open your eyes, Adam.’
Sabir opened his eyes. It was still dark, but he was just able to make out the faces of those immediately surrounding him in the first suggestion of pre-dawn.
It was then that he knew that he was not blind. That he had merely been having a mimetic vision. Hacking sobs racked his body. In a sudden cognitive rush he remembered taking the datura. He remembered the ceremony. He remembered going to sleep. When he had recovered sufficiently to speak, he made a grab for Ixtab’s arm. ‘What did I do? What did I say?’
‘You told us many things.’
‘Did I tell you the seven secrets?’
‘Yes. The seven secrets the Vision Serpent told me.’
There was a heavy silence. Sabir could almost smell the excitement emanating from his companions.
‘No. What are those secrets?’
Sabir sat up. ‘What did I tell you?’
Calque moved in closer. He crouched down beside Sabir. ‘You told us that the Third Antichrist was already living amongst us. That you knew his name and his condition, but that no one else must be allowed to know it. That if they did, the Corpus Maleficus would seize it from them in an effort to support the Antichrist and delay the return of the Devil.’
‘Christ Jesus. That’s it? That’s what I told you?’
‘Yes. You quoted Revelations to us too: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.”’
‘Yes. Yes. It’s what Achor Bale said to me when he had me imprisoned in the cesspit. “AND AFTER THAT HE MUST BE LOOSED A LITTLE SEASON.” The maniac thought he was still protecting us all from the Devil, just like his de Bale ancestors had done for the kings of France.’
The Halach Uinic motioned to Ixtab. She crouched forwards and spoke to Sabir. ‘We do not understand this. How can the de Bales imagine they are protecting us all from a Devil they themselves seem busy conjuring up?’
Calque laid a hand on Sabir’s shoulder to stop him from responding. ‘Let me answer this. I’ve become something of an expert on the subject in recent months. The Devil-Antichrist question is a tricky one. In a nutshell, the Corpus believes that only by placating the Devil – that is, by supporting his earthly representative, the Third Antichrist (the first two Antichrists being Napoleon and Hitler, according to Nostradamus) – can the Devil be seduced into allowing the earth to follow its own devices. To run its own shop. Once the Devil himself is tempted to intervene – once he loses patience, in other words, with the machinations of his henchmen – we are doomed to Armageddon.’
Ixtab shook her head. ‘How can this be? Is there no way to stop it? Or does the Corpus think this is all preordained too?’
‘To the de Bales’ way of thinking, the only palpable threat to the Third Antichrist is via the Second Coming. Because the Antichrist is the evil mirror image of Christ – Christ’s dark shadow – the antimimon pneuma – the counterfeit spirit, or what have you, only a true representation of Christ – ergo the Son of God – ergo the Parousia – ergo the Second Coming – can possibly hope to overcome him. The Corpus Maleficus can’t afford to let that happen, because then they would have failed in their sworn duty. The crazy thing is that they think they are the goodies. That whatever they need to do to keep the Devil at bay is justified, within the greater scheme of things. That is their gage. The rest is irrelevant to them. The Devil is God’s evil brother – the Antichrist bears the exact same relationship to Christ. The one, in both cases, presupposes the existence of the other. The Antichrist is therefore Christ’s dark shadow or mirror image, and can only be overcome by his opposite number. And vice versa. You see? It’s simple, really.’
Ixtab shook her head. She glanced at the Halach Uinic. He met her gaze, then let his eyes fall to the ground.
Sabir made a grab for Ixtab’s hand. ‘What else did I say?’
‘You also spoke of your blood sister, Yola Samana. You told us that she had been made pregnant by her husband, Alexi Dufontaine, on a beach on the island of Corsica. But that her coming child was no normal child, but the one predicted by Nostradamus in his lost prophecies – the prophecies that you had read and then burned in order to keep them out of the hands of Achor Bale and the Corpus Maleficus. That this child was indeed the Parousia, which some call the Second Coming. That because of his background, and the cursed nomadic tribe from which he sprang, the child would grow up to be a representative of all faiths, both religious and secular – of all people, not simply the Christians – of all races, not simply the Aryan and the Semitic. That his birth was designed by God to bring the peoples of the world together, and not to separate them, just as Revelations had foretold. “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”’
‘Oh, God. I told you all that? But I swore not to tell.’
‘To whom did you swear?’
Sabir shook his head uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. To myself, I suppose. Whoever I swore it to, in my delirium, is irrelevant. I owe Yola my protection. She is my blood sister. There are vows I have taken in front of her tribe. The more people who know of this thing, the more danger she stands in.’
The Halach Uinic smiled. ‘All is well then. No one here will abuse your trust. You told us because you had to pass on the message. The Vision Serpent made you do so. The cult of the Second Coming shall start here. When the time is ripe we will proclaim his name. And that will be on 21 December 2012. At the very end of the Cycle of the Nine Hells.’
‘Then you’ll be signing the child’s death warrant. I shouldn’t have spoken. You were wrong to give me the datura. I have betrayed my blood sister.’
‘No, Adam. You told us because your unconscious mind sensed that you must share the secret you had stumbled on. That it would only be believed if it emerged under such circumstances. Such a secret is too much of a burden for any one man to carry.’
Sabir shook his head. ‘Wrong. I told you because I thought I was the chief whose eyes the Spaniards started out of his head with the garrotte – that I was about to die, in other words, and carry my secret to the grave with me. I dreamed that I was in the clearing with Friar de Landa. That I saw Akbal Coatl writing his record. That I saw the broken bodies of those the Friar had already tortured. When I was blinded, the Vision Serpent briefly lent me his eyes so that I could bear witness to what had occurred.’ Sabir ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘It’s all nonsense, of course. I wasn’t there. The drug was simply working on me. I was on a fucking trip, that’s all. And my unconscious mind grabbed hold of the first thing that suggested itself to me, which just happened to be the de Landa story. Under different circumstances it could just as easily have latched onto the storyline of a book I’d just been reading. Or a movie. Or something that had happened to me earlier that day in the street.’
‘You were that chief. You did see the Vision Serpent.’ The Halach Uinic was bending forwards at the waist. He was urging Sabir to believe him with his eyes.
‘Bullshit. How can that be possible?’
‘Because we were with you, Adam. All of us. We witnessed what happened to you. Ixtab was one of the ones who carried you from the square. As was I. As was the guardian, and the Chilan, and Calque. We all carried you out of there. We were chosen to share your vision. It was a communal one. As an acknowledged midwife, Ixtab was even told by the Franciscans to tend to your wounds so that you would not die. So that your torment could serve as an example to the other chiefs.’
Sabir looked uncertainly at the Halach Uinic. Then he gave a bitter laugh. ‘This is all madness. You all carried me out here, now, this minute. Not out of the square at Maní four hundred and fifty years ago. I don’t believe a word of it. Where was Lamia in all of this? I need to speak to her. I need to ask her something.’
The Halach Uinic stood up. He looked around himself in the darkness. ‘This is impossible, I am afraid. For Lamia has gone.’