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Saturday’s Jubilee

 Kindly donated to the Chthonios Site by Stephen Attragon
© 2001 Stephen Attragon

There’s always another memory to recover within the pit and pendulum of the mind.

“Nothing. Nothing that we can do,” howls Tomasso. “Not so,” replies Giordano. “There’s always something more we can do. A lesson is repeated until learned.”

Thomas Campanella turned, scratching once more on the wall in his adjoining cell, puking on the floor after his second Questioning. “I’m still more or less alive. They didn’t kill me. I said,’ You didn’t kill me. I’ve bested you bastards of God. My soul is immortal!’ —

“and if you leave,” adds Tom, “take me along, my good Jordan Nolano. Friend, how went your Questioning?”

Giordano Bruno hears the call, rolls from bed, mouth and buttocks bloody and embiled, to whisper through a crack in the wall, “They shoved the pear in my mouth. Next I recall something inserted up my arse: the Pope’s sausage perhaps.”

Painful giggles erupt from both men.

Bruno continues with grimaced mien, “I spat out my pear to angrily declare, ‘If you want to lead me to Christ, you’d better find another way. You’re lives are talking so loudly, I can’t hear a word you say!’”

Both heretics laugh as they cough.

Bruno adds as he holds his leg cuff, “...unnatural men, these brutes. Anyway, the dunking ensued, the baptism of John, designed, they said, for this ‘generation under condemnation’. Then came the boiling water in boots —

“Finally, another tonsure of St. Dominic.” Tom, the caged panther, replies, “I was Dominic, and you were St. Francis! We shook hands, remember?” Bruno chuckles. “Then we’ll get through this again, old friend, this time shaking bloody knuckles!”

Giordano now collapses in bed as old dreams of England drift through his head, of London, the Thames — the Mersey River. A slight fever now precipitates a shiver and an hour-long ecstasy meant to bring him closer to Mystery Achievement.

II

There’s always another wound to discover among the stigmata of the mind.

One month later sees the same scalded feet laying upon the same dirty bedsheet. Bruno, torn from his Dominican sacerdos and hurled into unstillness, steadies himself within a dark night of the soul, achieving the great Mystery Achievement. Meanwhile his captors’ plan: his life will be meant as a sacrifice in the Jubilee Carnival.

Rising now, Bruno staggers like a drunken sailor (the after-effects of his illumination in God), having overcome his jailor’s little world and the dirty insults hurled by the theologians who think him a clod. Once more, Tom scrapes, weaker, paler.

“Dano, good Dano, my Jordan Nolan, my sweet Jesus Nazarene! I grow older so that even my shadow cannot be seen though I’ve been here no longer than the rack which has made me grow.”

Tearful laughter breaks forth from both men.

Bruno scratches: “Tom, I’ve seen the light! Our God is loving, and these evil men are a brood of vipers in Satan’s den! Let me teach you God’s vision of might, to shine in these dungeons and make the wonder what we’ve found: an 8^th Sacrament to ponder.

“Listen Tom. For years I’ve ridden upon their water baptism of John with a mouthful of pear, and in boiling boots, amid their terrible howls and hoots over and over and over again. To hell with these men! Let me now lead you to the Beautiful and the True.”

Tom retorts, “But I flee my body to escape all pain.”

Replies Bruno, “No, Thomas, that’s no gain. Do not argue. In the 3^rd sphere do not argue! We who have passed beyond Lethe mustn’t forego pain. Brother, only by accepting it may we see God’s Truth and Beauty and, like Jesus and John, our souls carry on.”

Tom replies, “I was John the Baptist and you were Jesus! I baptized with my own hands!” “Tom,” says Bruno, “I know the way beyond these bands, iron crowns, and fire brands.”

Tom responds, “But if you leave, to what will my sanity cleave?” Replies Bruno, “If I go meekly, I shall draw all men to me in a sacrifice which makes do for a friend’s liberty too. Tom, we shall never shake hands. I now know how to handle these brigands.” “To what end and purpose?” asks Tom. Replies Bruno, “To Truth, Beauty, and Freedom.”

III

There’s always another redemption to uncover within the salvation history of the world.

Saturday’s Jubilee came and went. Tomasso, free, though crippled and spent, ever-contemplates the great event. Over writing desk bent, Campanella now scratches one last comment to his old friend regarding his Mystery Achievement. “To Giordano Bruno, from Tom: To Truth, Beauty, and Freedom.”

Inspired in part by the song, Everything You Want, by Vertical Horizon

Kindly donated to the Chthonios Site by Stephen Attragon
© 2001 Stephen Attragon

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