Bely discovers the little bottle with his pills on a table. Two pills slide down the bottleneck and out into his hand.
‘A soul breaks away into this interspace, and nothing can bring it back,’ mumbles Bely while swallowing the pills.
‘This interspace you mention, is it the same as the space that the souls we absolve go to?’ asks Rosa as she readjusts her gloves.
‘That’s a whole different story,’ replies Bely then resumes pacing the creaking carpet of the hotel room. ‘Listen. The body of every single person, including yours and mine, is inhabited not by a single soul but a number of souls. Quite insignificant if you consider the number of souls that are trapped in those who comprise the Great Orc. We’re talking thirteen human bodies who are weighed down by the unbearable weight of the past.’
‘Are these the souls from our previous lives?’ asks Rosa with a quizzical gaze beneath her brow.
Bely stops and looks closely at the abrasions on the hotel room door. ‘We have all lived many lives, we all were many in the past, but that’s not what’s crucial here. That’s obvious to all who have ever experienced déjà vu. Over many thousands of years you and I met on many occasions, we both know that. We met in different physical shapes, different genders, in different relationships and at different times. And to some degree, with special techniques, we can trace our pasts. But don’t forget, our souls are comprised of many souls, which are much older. So when we perform absolution we absolve these ancient souls that were brought here millions of years ago and have roamed aimlessly ever since their bodies were violently murdered. It is these ancient souls that determine who we are here today.’ Bely halts at the other end of the room and looks out the window. The firewall of the adjacent house grows invisible as the grey of the day yields ground to twilight. The shaft in front of Bely’s reflection in the window fills with thick, fluffy darkness.
‘In Scientology we dedicated a lot of our time to interviews that they call auditing. But that would require time we just don’t have. But yesterday, when we entered the New World, we launched a series of processes. At this point the only way forward is to pick up every little piece of information from all the names we have before these processes have the last word. We have six more names on our list. They must give us the names of the other members, all of whom we must find and absolve before it’s too late.’
Rosa puts down the Dictaphone and sits on the edge of the bed. ‘And that’s where you got your E-meter?’ she asks, pulling out the cigarette case, which she then places on the desk next to the Dictaphone.
‘You mean from the Scientologists?’ Bely asks.
Rosa nods.
‘Yes, it’s the only thing I took from them, which is nothing compared with what I left behind. But that’s how it’s got to be. I absolved them, too. Generally speaking, the worst thing that we can bring upon ourselves is to drag our past with us. I disagree with many things in Scientology, now that I’m not biased and can look at it from a distance, but they had a breakthrough in one thing: we must get rid of our own baggage, especially that which we’re not aware of.’
‘Ah, Bely, from your mouth everything sounds so simple. I’ll never be able to the forgive people who tried to kill me,’ says Rosa, lighting up a fresh cigarette.
‘Do you have to smoke in here?’ asks Bely.
Rosa steps to a window, opens it slightly and puffs out into the fresh air. ‘Listen, these socialist hotels far surpass all that capitalist opulence in one thing – they’re so impregnated with tobacco smoke that nothing can make them stink any worse. And this one doesn’t even have smoke detectors.’
Bely shrugs. ‘Rosa, you say that you’ll never be able to forgive. But that’s the only way we could have met. We should be grateful to those people who made our paths cross. Without them we wouldn’t be sitting here.’
‘Bastards,’ Rosa hisses and flicks her half-smoked cigarette into the night, white smoke pouring out of her mouth. With her blunt metal grip she grabs hold of the window handle and twists it shut.
‘Yesterday I dreamed about the swamp again. I couldn’t get back to sleep afterwards. That absent look on Gram’s face when you gave him the cracker. He just wouldn’t leave me alone, but after a while I finally drifted off. Leeches everywhere, little tadpoles crawling all over me, and I couldn’t run because my legs wouldn’t move. Horrible.’
Bely looks at the clock. He reaches for the little bottle again, spills two pills into his hand and swallows them.
‘You’re a pill-popper, you know that? You stuff yourself with this shit way too much.’
‘They’re not pills, only a dietary supplement,’ replies Bely, scratching his abdomen.
‘And look what they’ve done to you, these dietary supplements of yours. They’ve turned you into a walking skeleton. In the month I’ve known you, you must have lost at least five, six kilos, in spite of eating normally. It’s must be the pills. What else?’
‘These pills break down fat cells in your body. I believe that it’s much harder to identify souls that inhabit corpulent bodies as opposed to slender ones. Fat acts as their shelter, it’s where they become unidentifiable and hide, out of sight. Human fat is the source of their food. It’s no coincidence that clarity of thought can only be achieved through fasting. When we starve, we deny these souls their chance to hide, to pollute our minds, to subdue us.’
The moment Bely utters his last word, Rosa nervously grabs the bag on the table. In it are two large bottles of Coke, crisps, a packet of chewing-gum. She pulls open the bag of crisps and digs in. Bely looks at the clock.
‘We should leave in twenty minutes. I’ll just go to my room quickly. I’ll knock when I’m ready. OK?’ Bely takes the little bottle and drops it into a pocket in his coat.
Rosa steers her hand full of crisps towards her mouth. The residue of small yellow potato flakes and sparkly crystals of salt are embedded in her glove. Anxious and munching away, she watches him leave.
Once in his room, Bely first takes off his shirt, then his undershirt. He lights up the room and observes his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. Lush body hair across his chest, moles, large and small, scattered everywhere. Bely leans closer under the light above the mirror. His fingertips travel carefully across the upper part of his body. He lifts his left arm, feels around the armpit, turns around and examines his neck and back, leaning towards the source of light to ensure that nothing remains unexamined. Nothing, nowhere, nothing.
‘Strange,’ mumbles Bely, ‘really strange.’
Rosa is already in the corridor when Bely steps out of his room. Outside, the sky flickers in the white snow. Hastily, Rosa lights up a cigarette, takes a deep puff and swings her hand under Bely’s arm. Together they trudge along Gosposka Street, once one of the city’s most élite thoroughfares, but today a harbinger of the old city centre’s impending decay. Feeble street lamps, closed stores. Above their heads the web of gloomy New Year’s decorative silhouettes dips ominously low from the snow that adheres to the wires. Passers-by are few. On the corner a man with a radio on top of a cardboard box. Dalmatian folk-songs intertwined with static. In his hand, a marionette soldier dangles off long, translucent threads. The marionette promenades, floating above the soiled snow. Glittering in the night. In the middle of a square further on stands a Baroque plague column. Behind it, another balloon featuring the unusual sign, beneath which stands the inscription: EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF