The Country that Disappeared, chapter 17: Revelations of Power.

“That’s the main reason I can’t stand them… there’s no honour – not in life, and certainly not in death! I mean, what kind of creation gets into your food stores, grows wings, and then turns to dust when you confront it?

That’s the absolute worst, you know: when your walls are covered in little powder spots where you’ve slapped them. Plus, now they’ve figured out that’s their safe-zone, so I have to wait for them to fly out into open territory. I just can’t stand it! No dignity, no last words, not even a little corpse to write poetry over. Just a pathetic poof! I mean, what kind of life is that, even for a moth?!” 

“What we usually do in our cottage is put all our stuff in vacuum-seal bags. Eva prefers to double-bag them, just to make sure,” said the president, sat in the back seat of the dark green Lada SUV, as they drove along the embankment on their way to the cathedral.

In the meantime, Miloš was talking about whatever he was talking about: the problem, as usual, infinitely more interesting than the actual solution…

“Now, a horsefly on the other hand: there’s a being worthy of respect! Oh, they’re a terror all right. Triangulate you right down to the jugular if they have to! But at least they have the decency to do it directly. Yes, I’m a horsefly: I’m going to try and suck a bit of your blood, but I’m gonna do it direct, face to face, aerial combat: none of this sneaking around bullshit! Just you and me, mandible on skin, in this meadow, right now… Let’s dance the kamikaze!  And then there’s the way they die: in one piece, crushed but not forgotten, a true Samurai to the very end.”

They turned off the main road towards the great stone gate, with ancient hybrid beasts perched upon its turrets. Underneath them a police car was parked up, an officer with a gun next to it, motioning for them to stop. The tinted window buzzed down to reveal Miloš, whereupon the officer waved them through.

“Where was I?” he continued.

“I’ve no idea,” replied the president.

“Oh yeah, horseflies. The strange thing is how respectful they are. They can be chasing you down the garden path, but as soon as they enter your home – (accidentally I might add) they’re total sweethearts: wouldn’t even bite a baby!”

“Ah, that must be the bishop,” said the president. 

Waiting outside was bishop Pěvec, who swept towards them as they exited the vehicle, his robes skimming the cobblestones, head bobbing in earnest like a bird’s nest in the wind.

…

“So good of you to come on such short notice.”

He led them across the square and through the rose- patterned doors, the gold mosaic sun above soaking in the fading light of day. 

Although he was no stranger to the place, having visited for midnight mass, to attend the odd famous wedding that everyone knew wouldn’t survive much longer than the reception, or simply to show off their capital’s finest sights to a foreign dignitary; each time he entered it was like revisiting a forgotten dream, such was the lucid majesty that now surrounded him.

And as his eyes drifted, it became progressively harder to imagine its construction. Indeed, so timeless did it appear, it was hard to imagine it ever being built at all, as if in defiance of all collective memory.

“Mr President,” began the bishop, finally settling his eyes on his guest.

 “Let me ask you – and please, try to answer without any political consideration…What do you see?”

“I see devotion, splendour, the impossible made real.”

Leaning up against a pillar with his arms folded, Miloš looked less impressed.

“I see a man who’d get down from that damn cross to slap me if he knew what I’d done on the weekend.”

Bishop Pěvec turned to him: “There is no sin that cannot be forgiven here.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said,” continued Miloš, “but if you really want my opinion, it’s all for nothing anyway. All this opulence: the gold, rubies, stained glass, just to watch some poor sod die for eternity? And while we’re at it, what’s the cross anyway? A sword in the ground, a sign of defeat. Look the other way, turn the other cheek, love your enemy? Just one big noble nothing!”  

“In my experience, one needs far more faith to believe in nothing,” said bishop Pěvec, who had the disarming effect of nodding, as if in pleasant agreement to everything that was being said. “But I did not invite you here for conversion, nor to forgive your Saturday night sins.”

“You see,” said the president, “that’s the holy way of saying shut up. Now, father, if you didn’t invite us here for that, then what was the reason?”

Pěvec smiled. “When I asked you what you saw, perhaps I should have asked you what you didn’t see. For history is but a jigsaw puzzle. Take away a piece and the story is lost, the picture incomplete…”

Despite himself, Miloš was now staring up into the vaulting above, like the ribs of a great whale, interrupted at points by gaps of around a few meters, before continuing on their journey.

He’d never noticed anything missing before, not in a place that contained seemingly everything. 

“We have a tendency to look down on those who have lost pieces of their own history, ancient as it may be,” continued bishop Pěvec. “We even go out of our way to help them solve their own puzzles, to ‘rediscover’ those pieces, even carving our own for them to use instead. Never did it occur in all our wise virtue, that such a fate could also befall us. Our puzzle is, and has always been, perfectly complete, or so it comforts us to think…”

After lighting some candles at the base of the eternal sufferer, the nun now approached them.

 “Sister Michaela will lead the way.”

They followed her over to the isle, through a curtained archway, and down a stone spiral staircase lit by lanterns. At the landing they came to an iron gate, which she unlocked with a key on a brass ring.

“For centuries, our order has guarded over a piece of our own puzzle in secret solitude, always knowing the time would come to put it back in its place and heal our schism,” continued Pěvec, as they made their way along a narrow stone passageway, through the shadows that clung like cobwebs.

Sister Micheala unlocked another gate, where an oval chamber awaited them, wider than the tunnels they had been in, so that they could stand side by side as she walked over to the steel door, putting her face to the black screen next to it. There was a blue flash and the sound of bolts unlocking, as the door slowly swung inward…

Inside was a red brick room with a domed ceiling from which hung a chandelier, its twelve candles illuminating the oak caskets that were laid out in a circle below.

“Don’t tell us these are your sleeping knights,” said Miloš.

“No,” replied the bishop, “what we possess here is less mythical, and, dare I say, more powerful. Please, feel free to look inside.”

The president lifted the lid to reveal a grey spiralling pillar, snugly encased in a bed of red velvet. Protruding slightly from each end were four turquois rods. He knelt down, tracing his finger along the grooves.

“Here are the missing parts of the puzzle,” said the bishop.

“Please, father,” said the president softly, “in your least ecclesiastical language, tell me what I am looking at.”

“In a word – batteries. People today find it impossible to view our great structures as anything other than an aesthetic anomaly. Their very beauty blinds them to any other interpretation. In truth, however, they performed a role of great civilisational importance, being literally a light onto the world.”

“You’re saying these batteries were used for…” began the president.

“Collecting and storing energy from this very cathedral,” nodded Pěvec, his eyes now aglow.

“But how? From where?”

“Lightning. One bolt of our lord’s shiny stuff was enough to power cities for months on end. In those times we had so much in storage, we leant them out far and wide across the kingdom. But all this was lost in the great purge, when it was decided that energy was a resource and not a gift; something to control, sanction and above all profit from. Oh, there were still reserves for great illumination festivals for decades to come: glowing capitals from Paris to Istanbul! Impressive – yes, but serving no purpose other than to make us forget what we had lost. With what you see before you, we had the potential to explore beyond, to add more land to our map; an endless ripple of discovery!”

“So, this whole place is an ancient power station?”

“Yes. We have faced persecution, reprisals, been forced into hiding, simply for remembering the glory that used to be, for refusing, in our own passive way, to be distracted by fireworks, the great explosions, the bold proclamations, the CGI and lunar golf shows. We maintained that the true discoveries were not up, but around, encircling us like an onion with limitless layers.”  

“Can I get one of those, sister?” said the bodyguard to the nun, who was rolling a cigarette from a black leather pouch.

“Sure,” she said, handing over a pre-rolled one.

“As I’m sure you can imagine,” continued Pěvec, motioning to sister Michaela, now enveloped in a of halo of smoke, “the stress has been quite immense. Many of us have gone to the grave, some in worse ways than others, yet always knowing our sacrifice was never in vain, that however bad things appeared, hope remained; that one day the confusion would return to us in the form of a question, after every other option had been exhausted, once the small print of our reality were finally read, and not agreed upon. It would all inevitably, excuse the pun, come full circle again.”

 “And so, here you are,” said sister Michaela.   

“Yes, here we are,” said Miloš, blowing a smoke ring.

“I suppose the only question now, father, is whether it’s possible to restore these buildings back to their original purpose,” said the president.

Bishop Pěvec smiled.

…

“Pretty interesting, right?” said the president, as they rolled back along the cobblestones.

“Yeah,” replied his bodyguard. “I mean if you’re losing your hair like that, why fight a losing battle? Just shave your head, or just go to Turkey like my uncle did. Came back with a whole new head of bumfluff. Ok, it was ginger, but baldies can’t be choosers!”

“I mean the whole medieval power station stuff, converting lightning to energy, etc.”

“Oh, yeah – sure… It’s a winning platform if you ask me: Make our churches power plants again. Hey, there’s Jon Lenoch’s house. Did you know it’s actually true that he requires two beds to perform: one in his dressing room, and the other on stage, the lazy bugger! Remember when he was banned from getting rid of that hornets’ nest due to some historical buildings law, so he tried to get them drunk instead on plum brandy, and ended up getting the whole area shut down for a week?”

“Oh, yes,” chuckled the president, “I remember that. Almost had to make a statement about it.”

“They’re actually very peaceful though. My grandad said they used to leave the pram under the nest in their garden while they went fishing and the hornets would actually watch over the baby. They can recognise faces, you see; wouldn’t let strangers onto the property. I tell you, that generation really knew how to –”

He swerved the car to the side, as a projectile roared past the window, exploding into a wall behind them. Ahead the police car lurked in the gloom of the tunnel, where muzzle-fire flickered like fireflies.  

Grabbing a weapon holstered next to the gearbox, Miloš leapt from the door, and fired back.

“You got another one of those?” shouted the president.

“Behind the middle seat! Use the magazine with the red stripe!”

Rounds buzzed all around them, burrowing through steel and glass with elemental indifference.

Fear wasn’t the appropriate word really, not with the current surge of adrenaline, but rather the great shame of proving the old cliché true; that the higher up the ranks you went, the more useless you were when it came to these tasks.

According to his own, even operating a water-pistol would be a challenge, as he exited on the other side. Crouched behind the open door, he noticed a silhouetted figure running into position with a rocket launcher.

Well, one thing done in certainty was worth ten done in a hurry, he thought, slithering under the car until he reached the bonnet, before levelling his weapon.

The target meanwhile had reached a tree, and as he shouldered his weapon, the president exhaled half his breath and squeezed the trigger. The man seemed to lose all bone density in his body, collapsing dead on the spot.

His bodyguard was slumped in a pool of blood when he reached him. A decision had to be made, so he opened the passenger door and bundled him inside, before getting in himself and slamming it into reverse.

The silence from the backseat grew louder as he drove, until it became a deafening roar that he could not stand.

“Listen, did I ever tell you the first time I met Eva? Well, it was during my more idealistic phase, when everyone was like family – when I thought I could heal someone just by locking eyes with them. Anyway, I’d just come out of the pub and was trying to find a newsstand to buy cigarettes with my last twenty crowns, but then I caught sight of a tramp asleep on a park bench. Well, I’d smoked enough already, and besides, he looked like he needed it more than me… Are you listening?”

Miloš’s eyes flickered, as blood trickled from his grimacing mouth.  

“Well, as I slipped the coin into his pocket, I looked up, and there she was, doing exactly the same to his other pocket. I mean, can you imagine? We met over a tramp!”