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THE ASTRONOMER
I
He had to escape from the monastery.
He should not be there at all; he had never wanted to become a monk. He'd
said that to his father, but his father had been unrelenting, as usual,
and his mother did not have the audacity to oppose him, even though she
knew that her son's inclinations and talents lay elsewhere. The monks had
treated him badly from the beginning. They had abused and humiliated him,
forced him to do the dirtiest jobs, and when their nocturnal visits
commenced he could stand it no longer.
He set off in flight, and a whole throng of pudgy, unruly brothers started
after him, screaming hideously, torches and mantles raised, certain he
could not get away. His legs became heavier and heavier as he attempted to
reach the monastery gate, but it seemed to be deliberately withdrawing,
becoming more distant at every step.
And then, when they had just about reached him, the monks suddenly stopped
in their tracks. Their obscene shouts all at once turned into frightened
screams of distress. They began to cross themselves feverishly, pointing
to something in front of him, but all he could see there was the wide open
gate and the clear night sky stretching beyond it. The gate no longer
retreated before him, and once again he felt light and fast.
He was filled with tremendous relief when he reached the arched vault of
the great gate. He knew they could no longer reach him, that he had gotten
away. He stepped outside to meet the stars, but his foot did not alight on
solid ground as it should have. It landed on something soft and squishy,
and he started to sink as though he'd stepped in quicksand. He flailed his
arms but could find no support.
He realized what he had fallen into by the terrible stench. It was the
deep pit at the bottom of the monastery walls; the cooks threw the
unusable entrails of slaughtered animals into it every day through a
small, decayed wooden door. The cruel priests often threatened the
terrified boy that he, too, would end up there if he did not satisfy their
aberrant desires. The pit certainly should not have been located at the
entrance to the holy edifice, but this utmost sacrilege for some reason
seemed neither strange nor unfitting.
He began to sink rapidly into the thick tangle of bloated intestines, and
when they almost reached his shoulders he became terror stricken. Just a
few more moments and he would sink completely into this slimy morass.
Unable to do anything else, he raised his desperate eyes, and there,
illuminated by the reflection of the distant torches, he saw the
silhouette of a naked, bony creature squatting on the edge of the pit,
looking at him maliciously and snickering.
He did not see the horns and tail, but even without these marks he had no
trouble understanding who it was; now that it was too late, he realized
whom the terrified monks had seen. He instinctively froze at this
pernicious stare, suddenly wanting to disappear as soon as possible under
the slimy surface and hide there. All at once the blood and stench stopped
making him nauseous; now they seemed precious, like the last refuge before
the most terrible of all fates.
And truly, when he had plunged completely into that watery substance, it
turned out that it was not, after all, the discarded entrails of pigs,
sheep, and goats, as it had seemed, but was a mother's womb, soft and
warm. He curled up in it, knees under his chin, as endless bliss filled
his being. No one could do anything to him here; he was safe, protected.
The illusion of paradise was not allowed to last very long, however.
Demonic eyes, like a sharp awl, quickly pierced through the layers of
extraneous flesh and reached his tiny crouched being. He tried to withdraw
before them, going even deeper into the womb, to the very bottom, but his
persecutor did not give up. The thin membrane that surrounded his refuge
burst the moment he leaned his back against it, having nowhere else to go,
and he fell out—into reality.
And with him, out of his dream, came the eyes that continued their
piercing stare.
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