Lord Nikolich has promised
his only
child, Attilia that he will build a church for her wedding and a palace
where
she and her fiancé Alexander will live after it.
As he has recently sacked the
previous builder, he calls for the two best ones: John Damascene, a
specialist
in houses, and John the Ladder, a specialist in churches. Damascene will
build
the palace, and Attilia wants it to be as
a love letter. The Ladder will build the church.
When the Ladder presents his
building maps, he speaks about three churches. The first one will be built,
just as Lord Nikolich wants. The second one will be a garden, made of bushes
that will grow as the main building raises. The third one is secret, and
has to
do with Lord Nikolich’s personal improvement and
behaviour.
Damascene starts to build the
palace, but is usually nowhere to be seen. It seems that he doesn’t want
to see
Attilia because, as the Ladder said, every building must have a
secret.
However, when
everything is working the right way, the bush church stops
growing. When Nikolich and Attilia go
to the
building site there are no builders, nor John, and the church is not being
built. Instead of trying to find the Ladder to discuss the situation, he
calls
for Damascene (who he thinks is John’s sworn enemy) and asks him why the
church
isn’t being finished. Damascene comes with a head bound covering a recent
wound, and tells Lord Nikolich that something is preventing the progress
on one
of the three churches. Nikolich has made something wrong, and the works
on the
third church, which is being built in heaven, are not
progressing.
With the building of the palace,
there are things to be said too. One day Damascene calls for Lord Nikolich
because he has found a statue in the building site. He wants the statue
to be
in the hall of the palace, but Lord Nikolich, giving it hardly a glance,
tells
him not to. So John knocks the statue’s arm off, and starts to “bleed”.
Inside
the dark marble piece there are muscles, veins and a red liquid resembling
blood. It seems this is the evil deed that has prevented the third
church from
growing (there could be some other reasons for that, though). After this
event,
Damascene suffers a nocturnal attack (where he is wounded in the head)
and cuts
his attacker’s forefinger. It is said that the lovers and husbands of
the women
he had an affair with often try to kill him, thus the scarves and
swords. When
Attilia and Nikolich hear about this attack, they come to the site to speak
with John, Attilia worried about his “child”, Nikolich furious with his
worker.
He decides not to pay the money he owes them (one more reason for the hedge
church to stop growing). Damascene leaves and sends Lord Nikolich a box
with a
forefinger inside.
Nonetheless, Attilia tries to
mend
his father deeds by sending John the Ladder a letter with the money to
pay for
Damascene’s workers time, and some more for him to build a church for
someone
for whom a box hedge wants to grow. Attilia weeps in the urns Shuvakovich
placed (proving him right when he put them there) thinking all her
dreams have
ended in the worst way, when she sees that the box hedge is growing
again. She
calls for her father and they go to the site to see the old building,
but it is
in a ruinous state.
When, later that night, she
decides
to spend the night at the unfinished palace, she tries to close the door
to the
room, but she needs to turn the key 30 times in the locker. She finds
Damascene’s compasses. When she wakes up in the morning, she sees
through the
window the marble statue John found. She starts to think of the clues
John has
left in the palace and decides that he wanted her to go to some place 30
miles
east from the palace, Temishvar. When she and Yagoda get there, they
find the Church
of the Presentation of the Holy Mother of God in the Temple. Inside this
church, which is just as her church was going to be,
the priest gives her the deed of property designating her, and not her
father,
as the owner, and two wedding rings from both builders, the son she had
imagined and the father she would have deserved.
Also in the palace she
noticed one
day something particular in the furnishing of the hall entrance. Every
object’s
name in the room starts with the same letter. This was a game she played
with
her imagined son when she was a little girl, so that son, Damascene, is
playing
with her. Pleased by this thought, she goes to the dining-room and starts
following Damascene’s lead. When she unfolds the full picture, she finds
a map
leading her to a place west from Vienna (you can read more on this in Space Analysis). When she gets there, again with
Yagoda,
they have a reception by the Fortsmeister of Kremsmünster area, and the day
after that a lunch with the prelate of the monastery. She writes a letter to
her father explaining how the trip is going on. When she decides to come
back
to Ada, the prelate sends his lieutenant with her. On the way she
invites him
to come into the coach to talk, and the lieutenant offers Attilia a book
about
Simeon Pishevich. In that book there was, word by word, the same she had
written in the letter to her father and what had happened to her during this
travel’s time. Dazed by the fact, Attilia asks the lieutenant about one
young
man in the monastery by the name of Alexander who came to her at night and
seduced her. At this moment, Alexander, lieutenant of the prelate,
proposes to
her and they reach the climax of their love.
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Gil Fernández, Manuel
magilfer@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press