Papal decree

5

Nothing lasts forever.

Everything is endlessly changing. The river’s water, the sea, the wind, the clouds, the body as it ages, the cadaver as it rots, seconds, days, nights… nothing is static, not even a chair, this chair inside a grimy, brown room with a forty-watt lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, over the chair itself. The chair’s wood is riddled with woodworms; one day it will cease being what it is and turn into something else. The bulb will stop lighting up one day, or one night, but not tonight, and this room inside this abandoned warehouse will be demolished, together with the warehouse, to give way to a luxury condominium, which will later turn into something else.

Everything changes… always.

The light from the bulb failed from time to time, plunging the room into an ominous darkness. At times it flashed like a thunderstorm inside the glass, before glowing again with agreeable intensity, reflected over the chair, leaving the corners flooded in shadowy phantasmagoria.

The room had no windows. A white wooden door was the only way in. Time had worn down the original color of the walls and door with dark stains.

A violent kick threw the door open, adding another dent to countless others. At this precise moment the bulb went out, as if in protest.

‘Shit,’ the attacker swore, turning the light switch on and off impatiently.

After a while the capricious bulb flicked back on.

‘I was about to give up,’ he growled.

He entered the room with a show of power. I want, I can, and I command. A very confident attitude, since he knew of no one who could stop him.

He approached the chair, grabbed the back, and lifted it. Then let the legs of the chair hit the floor in unison. It would support him.

Next to the chair was a small black bag the attacker glanced at. Everything was ready.

He went out and left the door open. The bulb threatened to go out, but when the man returned, it was illuminating the chair as it should. He was dragging someone who appeared lifeless, and sat him in the chair. It was an old man, badly beaten. At first it was difficult to keep him seated, since he didn’t have the strength to support himself, and tended to fall forward. The attacker steadied him with a hand on his head. He had time. While the old man recovered consciousness, he would pull himself together.

A blindfold prevented him from seeing the place or his tormentor. Dried blood smeared his lips, a remnant of recent beatings. A bruise marked his neck. This old man had been tortured methodically and brutally.

He coughed a little to open his throat passages, but even that was difficult. He was in pain all over. The attacker interpreted the cough as a return to consciousness, and he was ready. He bent over the sack and opened it.

‘Who’s there?’ the old man asked in a startled voice. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

He was so naive. He had attended to the request of a friend who knew someone who needed a translation of a parchment. The next morning he caught a plane, and when he landed, instead of characters written on a parchment, he saw the floor a few inches from his face. A hard blow to the neck dropped him to the ground. He never even saw who attacked him. They blindfolded him and continued to beat him. He couldn’t say how many there were, maybe only one, or what the motive was. He offered money, the little he had, but apparently they weren’t after money. In the midst of his desperation, he tried to maintain lucidity. His mental faculties were all he had left, but even those he lost momentarily from a harder blow. He regained consciousness sitting in a chair with someone rummaging around in something at his feet.

‘I don’t have anything that could be of interest. I’m a professor, l live an honest life. Have mercy.’

The attacker got up. He had a syringe and a glass container in his hands. He inserted the needle into the plastic top of the container and drew up the colorless liquid. He expelled the air, pressing the handle until a drop appeared at the point of the needle. He let the container fall and it shattered into shards of glass. He stared at the blindfolded old man, who was silent, as if expecting the worst.

‘The rules are simple. I ask and you answer. Any exception to this rule will have consequences, understood?’ the attacker recited.