Chapter 477

“Now? The Mass just started.”

I lowered my head and whispered. Elias, whose eyes were practically glowing, leaned toward me and asked without a hint of hesitation, “Yeah, now. Can we leave?”

“Haha… no. That’d be a little…”

Narke whispered back. No one would actually stop us if we left, but it would be rather rude.

Elias buried his face in his hands, then slowly dragged them down over his eyes before looking around with his bright blue eyes. He looked like he was trying to figure out some way to open the door without drawing attention. Of course, there was no such way. Resigned, he lowered his hands and slumped forward. I placed a hand on his drooping back and whispered, “If you sleep like that for a while and wake up, you should be able to remember everything just fine…”

“Mmmmmm.”

Elias shifted his upper body toward my waist. There seemed to have been some sort of miscommunication, because I certainly hadn’t meant he should sleep on my lap. When I tried to push him away, dumbfounded, Elias only burrowed in deeper without giving up. The quiet commotion was enough for me to feel the people sitting nearby turning to look our way. By the time I was making the most miserable face I could and silently calling Narke for help, Elias had already pulled the notebook out of the clutch resting on top of my wand holster.

You could’ve just asked me for it. I shoved Elias aside to convey exactly that. He gave me a crooked grin, but immediately turned serious again and opened the notebook.

Earlier, when he’d been taking notes during our research, he’d kept sneaking glances at the pages containing my diary entries. Now, however, he ignored every page that already had writing on it and searched for a blank sheet before scribbling down words. He must have been trying to minimize the amount of outside information coming in, since new information could interfere with the ideas he already had.

The scratching of his fountain pen against the paper blended into the priest’s calm voice and echoed through the cathedral.

Ignoring the curious looks coming our way, I decided that since Elias had already reached his conclusion, I might as well take in the scenery. Morning sunlight spilled across the magnificent golden ceiling, so high that I had to crane my neck to see where it ended. The Byzantine marble columns standing between the ceiling and walls beneath the golden mosaics looked somewhat out of place, but they were perfect for emphasizing the cathedral’s mysterious atmosphere. They made it immediately clear that I was no longer in Germany.

The stone arcades standing thick along both sides of the nave were familiar enough, since they were commonly seen in Romanesque and Gothic churches, and the countless arcades being built throughout Europe these days were naturally designed as arched colonnades as well. Even so, the sheer scale of the cathedral left me overwhelmed. The floor was covered in medieval mosaics, which were familiar in their own way, too. Amid the scratching of a fountain pen, the priest’s voice echoing again and again beneath the lofty ceiling, and the small noises made by people shifting around, I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, a soft veil was brushing against my cheek. As my eyes adjusted, a beam of sunlight slowly made its way into my pupils. Perhaps the sunlight had shifted enough to reach our faces, because my body felt warm.

“One is taking notes, and the other is sleeping.”

The person standing against the light teased me with a smile. Still dazed, I slowly turned my head and looked around. Everyone was making their way outside. Oh. Then I missed Communion, too. Perhaps they had assumed we were tourists and let it slide. I pressed the backs of my hands against my eyes and muttered, “…Sorry. I was tired.”

“I don’t blame you. Let’s go somewhere we can rest more comfortably.”

Narke mimed drinking a potion. Judging by how sleepy I was getting, it seemed I was due for another dose anyway. But drinking it here would attract attention, so we needed to find somewhere secluded.

Elias was busy doing all sorts of things with my fountain pen, sticking it behind his ear, putting it between his teeth, then opening the cap again to write something. I briefly considered the matter of hygiene before giving up—what could I do about it?—and followed Narke out of the cathedral.

He crossed the square and headed toward the southern building, the Procuratie Nuove. We followed the arched colonnade inside and looked for a café.

“What? There was a café only five minutes away on foot?”

“Haha. You know Giacomo Casanova¹? Apparently, he used to come here often, too. Byron² as well.”

“Hmm. Byron, sure, but Casanova having come here… is that really a good thing?”

“Visiting a place where someone famous once stopped by can be a fun experience too. It’s interesting to imagine what they might have been thinking as they looked out at this scenery. And since the Adriatic has flooded the square, shall we have our drinks outside?”

“Sure.”

The flooding that occurs throughout Venice when the Adriatic tide rises is called acqua alta. I looked out at the shallow seawater bathing the square in the morning sunlight. Acqua alta was worst in winter and weaker in summer, but since it was early April, it was still a little too soon to feel completely safe from it. Fortunately, the water in the square wasn’t very deep today. Maybe five centimeters at most. I had put on boots to hide my bandages, so I considered myself lucky that they also kept my feet from getting wet.

Once I sat down at an outdoor table, I slowly opened and closed my eyes in time with the sunlight drifting across the surface of the water. The sound of white pigeons flapping their wings gradually pulled my consciousness away.

“Hey now~ It really is a nice day, huh?”

At some point, Elias appeared and snapped his fingers in front of my face. I took my hand away from my chin and opened my eyes wide, jolting awake from my drowsiness. Elias had been following Narke around and helping him with his spells, but before long, he returned to the table with him.

A little while later, a waiter set cups of tea down on our table. I carefully cupped the potion in my hand and poured it into my teacup. After taking a cautious sip, my mind cleared almost immediately. I’d feel much better once I finished the whole cup. With that thought in mind, I looked at my friends.

Narke was looking at Elias too. Feeling our gazes on him, Elias straightened his back like a politician about to give a speech, cleared his throat with a dignified ahem, and pretended to twirl an imaginary mustache.

“Greetings, everyone.”

“Just get to the point.”

“Aw.”

Elias clicked his tongue and shook his head before leaning across the table like he did when we played games. He looked at us with a solemn expression, then stuffed a blueberry-studded biscuit into his mouth and mumbled, “Okay, throw me a word.”

A word. I could already guess why he needed one without having to ask. He intended to give us a warm-up for the deduction. Maybe he remembered how we’d reacted that day when he used Moby-Dick and Leviathan to build the framework of his hypothesis.

Since Elias wasn’t an ordinary person, I could understand his urge to walk us through his reasoning so that people like us—people who possessed imaginations that couldn’t easily keep pace with his thought process—could follow along. I took the biscuit Narke handed me and said, “Cyprus orange.”

“Hmm, you still remember that? I’m touched. We’re going to eat them together. I want to see how good you are at preparing an orange.”

“I’m not confident with a knife. I’ll just peel it with my bare hands and give it to you.”

“See? This is how you negotiate~!”

Elias pointed at me and bragged to Narke. In truth, when we were crossing Lake Constance on the rowboat, I had only told him to imagine a Cyprus orange. I never said anything about going to Cyprus to eat oranges. And yet, with those words, Elias seemed quite pleased with himself for somehow getting me to join his Cyprus orange gathering. At least, that was how it looked.

I only smiled before answering.

“I don’t think it’s anything to be so touched about. Even if you hadn’t told me to remember, I’d never forget something I said to you.”

“Why?”

Why? I had shoved the mixture of deliberate and accidental self-justifications to the back of my mind, only to find myself caught off guard by the question.

How could I forget the time I spent with a friend like you? That would have been a good answer. And it was true. But there was a strange sense of obligation lingering in my heart telling me I had to tell Elias something even closer to the truth. Still feeling flustered, I whispered, “Because I can’t forget.”

“…….”

Elias blinked quietly. Then, as if he had finally found something worth discussing, he suddenly exclaimed, “Ah, can’t forget, huh—” and turned his gaze toward the seawater filling the square.

“That’s unfortunate.”

“It is.”

“Why? I meant it in the sense that you can’t eat the forbidden fruit.”

“So did I.”

Elias’s sea-blue eyes turned toward me. Our conversations were built on all the knowledge we learned at the Gymnasium of this era, yet they always seemed to flow beyond it.

What did he mean by not being able to eat the forbidden fruit?

Did he mean that I existed in some possible world where the Garden of Eden, tens of thousands of years after Adam and Eve before their fall, was regarded as the only world? Or did he mean that anyone who observed everything from above the Garden of Eden had no choice but to remember everything? God never forgets anything.

Or did he mean that it was impossible to obtain the freedom, knowledge, and escape from ignorance represented by the forbidden fruit in the first place? If so, it meant I would have to live forever in the Garden of Eden as a puppet without free will. For an atheist like me, that was the worst blessing imaginable. And in truth, it probably would have been the same from his perspective, despite being a believer.

Elias never made anything explicit, and neither did I. It was much like the conversations we had when we talked about Moby-Dick. I liked these unpredictable conversations. To a third party, they might have sounded like the ramblings of people who had all gone mad, but there was something about that originality that revealed the many sides of Elias’s mind. It felt like proof that he saw life itself as part of art. I was in Venice, yet somehow I felt as though I had stepped right back onto that rowboat on Lake Constance all over again.

Elias continued, letting a breeze spill from his fingertips.

“A person who cannot forget can become a descendant of Abraham in faith, but at the same time, he would be Abraham’s father. Why? Think about it. Even if he drank from the stream of Lethe and still couldn’t forget a thing—he wouldn’t be scolded by Beatrice.”

At the mention of Beatrice, Narke smiled. Elias had naturally brought up The Divine Comedy. Those who drank from the waters of Lethe forgot their memories of the mortal world and could ascend to Heaven. In The Divine Comedy, the protagonist drinks the waters of Lethe, loses his memories, and is then harshly scolded by Beatrice. Forgetting was proof that he had sinned, that he still retained worldly desires.

I quietly recalled everything I had learned in literature class at the Second Academy.

“Isn’t there a chance that even someone with a good memory would forget everything after drinking from the river? If possible, I’d rather forget everything and be purified.”

“If someone drinks from the stream of Lethe and still has nothing to forget, then that means they lived closer to Christ’s teachings than anyone else. In that case, perfect memory is a blessing, while forgetfulness is the curse of death placed upon the descendants of Adam. Proof of original sin. New memories may take the place of what was forgotten and become love, and perhaps that’s what makes us stronger as human beings. But at its root, forgetfulness occurs when the grace that falls upon us like scattered rays of light ceases to be grace.”

When the wonders surrounding us cease to be wondrous, the mind sinks into complacency, and grace falls into the realm of inertia. Inertia accelerates time and makes things grow old. Inertia is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is proof of original sin written into humanity. Those words struck deep. Once again, Elias had started with casual talk about Cyprus oranges and pierced straight through to the heart of the matter through The Divine Comedy.

In any case, Elias ignored what I had said and continued speaking, and I felt that he resembled the older version of himself. Even the 18-year-old Elias from the novel I had read was hardly childish, but the Elias before me somehow felt older than that. After unsettling me and stirring up my thoughts for quite some time, Elias continued as though nothing had happened.

“But whose perspective is that? From the perspective of an omniscient being, all that forgetting must be a curse, an affliction that drives His children down the broad path. Those who do not forget live beneath the endless possibility of understanding all things. Someone who understands everything has no desires. They would be like an omniscient universe. But forgetting gives humans limits, and those limits drive them to clench their fists and reach for a summit they can never attain. That is the broad path Narke was talking about, and that is where the confusion of the world begins. So far, we’ve been saying that the God who forgets nothing punished the children of Adam and Eve with forgetting. But from the perspective of us humans, the descendants of Adam, we stand in this world on two frail legs that cannot possibly bear all the burdens carried on the shoulders of the omniscient. So… forgetting becomes a great blessing when a human being acknowledges their own weakness and bows their head at the feet of the Almighty. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Of course. There’s no reason I wouldn’t.”

“Good. Then I hope you’ll drink from the stream of Lethe and forget at least something.”

“Who would have thought that could count as a blessing…”

Narke whispered. I shrugged, feeling an indescribable emptiness after that conversation, which carried a fair amount of Elias’s rebellious philosophy while also dumping a whole bucketful of insults on my own trait. Elias, meanwhile, casually brought up the subject of the Cyprus oranges again before murmuring, “All right. If you’ve been following me this far, let’s analyze Saint Mark using the same logic.”

I continued to stare quietly at the table. When Elias waved a hand in front of me, I recited a line from a book by Nietzsche that I had read seven years ago that summer.

“Actually, a certain philosopher I read once said that there’s a blessing in being able to forget.”

“Hmm, good. Same topic, then. So why is forgetfulness a blessing?”

“Because forgetting allows us to put an end to foolishness. A person who forgets doesn’t cling to the past or hold on to resentment. You could say that forgetting is nature’s forgiveness, while memory is the possibility of revenge. More importantly, this philosopher saw forgetting not as inertia, but as an active force of restraint. While forgetting, a person can distance themselves from the struggle of all things and protect themselves. There’s an intentional tranquility in it. Someone who cannot forget has lost that ability, and so they have no happiness, no pleasure, no hope, and no present.”

“So, in other words, forgetting is the strength of an ‘animal.’ Still.”

Yes, still. As Elias had said, from the perspective of the Almighty, forgetting might be a weakness, but to humans, forgetting becomes a power. Up to this point, the two of them were more or less in agreement. The difference lay in how they got there. Elias believed that forgetting only became a blessing once humans acknowledged that they were nothing more than human. Nietzsche probably wouldn’t have put it that way.

Elias wiggled a finger as he muttered, “Not inertia, but an active restraint? Sounds like this philosopher has pretty high expectations for humanity. That’s an interesting perspective too.”

“…….”

“So, by going through the process of digestion called forgetting, you can build a self that is distinct from everything else. A person who can’t forget is someone who’s lost the ability to digest. Instead of building a self, they have no choice but to become one with everything, existing in every moment of time. That’s how it sounds to me.”

“Maybe…”

“Interesting. Who is this philosopher? Ah, no matter how I think about it, it’s an entirely human perspective. My argument—that forgetting becomes a supreme blessing when humans acknowledge their own weakness and bow their heads at the feet of the Almighty—wouldn’t mean anything to this person. Their thinking is practically Antichristian. In this person’s world, God isn’t the omniscient one… Humans are. To this philosopher, learning how to forget is essential to becoming human.”

“…….”

I almost wanted to applaud him. The student standing before me, with that unfamiliar black hair and bright blue eyes, was still Elias, and his intellect was just as extraordinary as ever. It would take us a long while to catch up with his insights.

I still didn’t answer when he asked who the philosopher was. Instead, I took the notebook from Elias’s hands and tried to organize the strange things I had noticed, only to give up again. The note-taking I had been doing under the guise of self-justification and self-suggestion was, in truth, completely unnecessary.

Once I realized that, I felt like I was sitting on pins and needles. Maybe if I got the notebook back a little later and wrote down what I had originally wanted to, this awkward feeling would finally go away.

I raised my head and looked at my friends. There was only half a cup of tea left now. The potion was forcibly filling my body with energy, while the sea breeze brushed against our collars. The sunlight was gradually moving overhead.

Narke was looking at Elias, and I did the same, my gaze passing through Narke. Perhaps Elias thought we were ready, because he smiled confidently and said, “Alright, guys. Luckily, this time it’s going to be much simpler than what we were talking about until now. I’m going to tell you my guesses, so Narke, let me know right away if anyone comes to mind! I don’t know much about how the Papal See works, so keep in mind I might be barking up the wrong tree.”

“Of course~ Go ahead.”

“Saint Mark’s remains weren’t here from the beginning. They were brought here at some point. Right?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Back in those days, stealing relics was practically encouraged, wasn’t it? Right? When the bones they snatched from Alexandria arrived in Venice, everyone from the Doge to the common people started thinking they were under Mark’s blessing.”

I nodded. So?

Elias raised his index finger and widened his eyes at us.

“Now, first, we need to think of the simplest answer. How can we interpret the ‘Saint Mark’ Einsiedel was referring to in the first place? Saint Mark was Peter’s beloved disciple. Am I right? Even if I slept through half my classes, I know that much.”

“Yeah, that’s right~”

Narke nodded. This was information he and I had already discussed. Elias spoke seriously.

“When you hear ‘the Papal States,’ what comes to mind? For me, it’s the Papal See. When I hear the Papal See, I think of the Curia, and when I hear the Curia, I think of the See of Peter.”

“Are you just playing with words?”

“Yeah! They’re slightly different, but they’re basically the same thing expressed in different ways. Assuming our Judas at the Papal See corresponds to the icon of Saint Mark, Mark would be…”

Elias paused for a moment, lifting his head to look around from where he sat. Then he looked back at us and quietly said, “The Secretariat of State.”

“…….”

“In other words, the culprit is in the Papal See’s secretariat. But it’d be a shame to stop there. The Secretariat of State has the Interior Office, the Foreign Office… Anyway, there are a whole lot of departments and a ridiculous number of people working there. So what do we do? Besides, you two would’ve thought of the Secretariat of State the moment you received the letter, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

We both nodded.

“So now we have to figure out which person in the Secretariat of State it is. Even if we don’t know exactly what this Einsiedel guy does, he must be no ordinary person if he can match you two. So it’s unlikely he gave us the code ‘Saint Mark’ with only one meaning in mind. As you know, a single icon can carry multiple meanings.”

I had thought his choice of words was a little strange when he called it ‘the icon of Saint Mark’ earlier, and sure enough, he was interpreting Saint Mark as though he were studying iconography—that is, considering the icon itself and the set of possible meanings contained within it.

Perhaps he read the agreement in our eyes, because Elias continued.

“We have too much information now. We need to sort through it. So I started thinking about what kind of image Einsiedel was projecting onto the icon of Saint Mark. Why would he give the Judas of the Papal See the revered name of Saint Mark? If all he wanted to tell us was that Judas belonged to the Secretariat of State, he could have used another clue.”

Ah. I slowly raised the corners of my mouth. I was beginning to see where he was going with this. Narke was resting his chin on his hand as well, watching Elias with a bright smile.

“Einsiedel took the original image of Saint Mark and layered something negative over it before passing it on to us. The Saint Mark we received is by no means the original Saint Mark. It’s Saint Mark with something negative added to him. We have to interpret this icon. A Saint Mark that has been negated. A Saint Mark made impure. Really, like you said, it’s almost a play on words. But where could you possibly find impurity in a saint?”

Elias raised an eyebrow at me with a smile. Then he slowly leaned across the table. Lowering his voice, he said, “I told you before. When the relics arrived here, the Venetians must have celebrated. But when Mark’s relics arrived in Venice, there was someone who couldn’t celebrate the news. Who do you think it was?”

Translator Note

1. Giacomo Casanova was an 18th century Italian adventurer from Venice who became the world’s most famous symbol of a romantic lover and womanizer. ↩︎
2. Lord Byron was a famous British poet and a leading figure of the Romantic literary movement. ↩︎