Una Storia che dovrebbero avuto scritta nel anno 1968

"Carissima, abbiamo peccato insieme." Il giovane chierico si tornava alla cortegiana.

"Si," diceva lei. "Abbiamo peccato insieme."

"E non possiamo farla penitenza insieme."

"Perchè?"

"Perchè gia sono sottodiacono. Gia ho fatto il passo che non permitte retrogresso. Mi vita è la castità, non è possibile il ritorno al mondo."

"Effectivamente, non possiamo far insieme la penitenza." Faceva una piccola pausa, e dopo: "Tu farài la penitenza ed andrài al cielo. Io peccarò ed andrò al diavolo ..."

"Non andrài al diavolo. Anche tu farài la penitenza."

"Sono peccatrice."

"Non lo sei per natura. Tutto uomo è creato al immàgine di Dio."

"Tutto uomo si. Tutta moglie, non."

"Scioccheze! Tutta moglie è un uomo."

La cortegiana si metò a ridere, e molto. Dopo diceva:

"Un uomo è un uomo ed una moglie è una moglie."

"Mai adori Giesù, al meno a veci?"

"Si, a veci."

"Sai che si chiama 'il figlio del uomo'?"

"Non sapevo. Essente tu chierico, dovrei sapere, e ti credo."

"E sai che su Matre e Vérgine, sempre?"

"Si. Stessi i Musulmani lo sanno."

"Allora, sei di acordo che la Vérgine è una moglie?"

"Si."

"Allora, essente il figlio di una moglie sola, Nostro Signore è 'il Figlio del Uomo'?"

"Ed allora la moglie non è altra che un uomo?"

"La moglie non è catta, né tampoco cane, non è cavalla, né tampoco vacca."

"Né tampoco angelo?"

"Né angelo."

"Eppur mi chiamavi molte veci questa notte 'mi angela'."

"Nel calore del amore dicono molte scioccheze i uomini."

"Forse."

"Di tutta manierea, ciascun uomo e ciascuna moglie è la creatura e la proprietà del Buon Dio."

"Sicuro che non lo siamo del Allà, il Dio dei Mahometani?"

"Perchè? Credevo che fosti la cattiva e schiava di questa gente?"

"Fui. Portanto, le mani sono le stesse en ciascun, e nella scrittura arabica formano le lettere ..." Lei toccava la mano destra del chierico, al dorso della mano e non la palma, avendo chiusato la pollice en un quasi occhio col indice, e comminciando per il digito minimo. "Aalif, Laam, Laam, Haa" e formava la ultima lettera con indice e pollice del chierico. Dopo diceva: "Cioè: Allà."

"Mai i Christiani che parlano Arabe acnhe egli chiamano Allà al vero Buon Dio."

"Non sapevo."

"Purtanto, liberata dai Turchi fosti a Malta."

"Si. Ti ricordo bene."

"Ed a Malta tutti sono Christiani, tutti parlano Arabe - stesso scrivendolo en lettere latine - e tutti chiamavano il Buon Dio 'Allà'."

"Mai il Arabe è la lengua sacrata dei Mahometani."

"Certo."

"Como il Latino lo è di noi Christiani."

"Certo, al meno del rito latino."

"È un poco difficile trovare - como si chiama Dio en Latino? - nella mano, non?"

"Dio si chiama Deus en Latino."

"È quasi Portuguese."

"Quasi."

"Non trovi Deus nella mano."

"Certo non, mai trovo 'omo Dei' nella faccia."

"Dove?"

"Resta tranquilla." Tracciava un cerculo cerca il occhio destro di su cortegiana, dicendo "o", dopo secquiva le sopracciglia dicendo "emme", dopo un altro cerculo cerca il occhio sinestro, ridicendo "o". "O-emme-o, omo."

"Cioè uomo?"

"Si." Dopo secquiva il naso, al dorso ed all'ala destra, dicendo "di". Dopo il spazio cerca le narici, dicendo "e". Dopo lalinea della bocca chiusa, dicendo "i". Dopo diceva: "di - e - i, Dei." Cio fu la ultima vece che la toccava al corpo.

"Omo Dei? Mai dicisti che Dio en latino è Deus."

"Si, mai 'del Dio' si dice 'Dei'. Si chiama un genitivo."

"È complicata lingua, questo Latino?"

Rideva il chierico. "Si, un poco."

"Allora il Buon Dio mi ha scritto sui occhi, sul naso e sulla bocca chiusa che sono sua?"

"Si. Stesso con bocca aperta puoi significare un dovere. 'Omo Deo ...' apri la bocca per comunicare o per laudare. 'Deo' è como 'a Dio'."

"E chè vuole ch'io faccia?"

"Penitenza per il nostro peccato. Dovi cessare dal essere corteggiana."

"E como posso allora vivere? Nessun uomo mi prendrà, e tu non puoi, gia che gia sei sottodiacono."

"Se cerchi una soluzione per vivere una vita christiana, il Buon Dio darà."

"Allora cerco."

Quasi como post scriptum.

La storia non è finita. Avevano fatto un bambino. Si chiamava Giovanni Omodei. Essente nato fuora matrimonio non poteva essere stesso chierico como su patre. Mai fu un uomo divoto e pietoso. Nella famiglia che fondava saranno due cardinali. Più tarde hanno creduto - gia che non era tanto commune omettere il hacca en "homo Dei" - che Omodei era dialettale per Amadei, di un plurale di Amadeo. È vero che il uomo di Dio - e ciascun uomo è di Dio - è appelato ad amare Dio.

Questo non è una storia che trovevo nei libbri, né che mi hanno racontata, mai è una congettura sopra il origine della famiglia Omodei. Questa ha realmente esistato, è furono realmente due cardinali. E nel Medio Evo fu realmente la moda di tracciare nella faccia umana il "omo Dei" - mai lo restante è la mia invenzione.

È un poco anche per ringraziare Umberto Eco, che mi ha provocato alla conversione cattólica per il libbro Nel Nome della Rosa. Prima di leggerlo avevo creduto che le vittime dell'Inquisizione furono Christiani. Mai furono Albighesi e Valdesi eccetera. Nessuna eresia delle enumerate nel libbro mi sembrava Christianesimo coretto. Né mi sembra oggi.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibblioteca pubblica d'Informazione
Giorgio Pompidou, Parigi
Giorno di Santa Giulietta
Trenta di Luglio, Due-Mila-Dodici.

George, Meet George!

George turned back. Susan would not yet be in bed, and she did not want to get out to the tent without a torch.

Oddly enough, as she was watching Susan's house across the square, in went a man who had a key.

"Susan never told me she had an acquaintance like that." And she did not find it very likely that Susan was hiding anything from her. So, probably this man had got the key in a wrongful way - unless it was merely a janitor. But was that likely when Susan rented the house?

Fortunately the balcony window was still open. George climbed up into the tree - not caring if people saw it or even preferring they did, since she was not the burglar - and let herself fall onto the balcony.

"Are you there Su? Are you all right?"

"Yes! Why?"

"There is a man who has a key, he entered here."

Susan came out of the bedroom. She was across the dining room.

"Where is he?"

"Have you got my torch?"

"I have. Here."

She lighted, but there was no man to be seen.

"Let's search the house together!"

They went downstairs, and found the staircase empty. Had they heard something? Nothing there either. Down the cellar? Well, there was one man huddling down there. "Sorry, I'm homeless!" he said in a muffled voice.

"How did you get into the cellar?" asked Susan.

"Door was open."

"You lie. I checked it just before George went away."

An advantage of living in detached houses is that every one knows it is his or her responsibility to check the cellar door, at least there are no neighbours who could do it as well as you can. And if you want to let some homeless guy in, you can do that too, since you need ask no neighbour for permission, you are the only one taking a risk, and you estimate if it is safe for you or not. In a case someone clearly lies, it is not.

"George? You have a man there?"

"He's got a gun too. Lie down, face to floor."

And the man lay down. "George, sit on him, we'll tie him up."

George preferred putting a foot on the neck. Susan got out and checked for ropes. She was not long, some electric cables not used would do well around his hands and feet. The torch was placed on the floor. She approached and thought there was something familiar with him. Once she had tied his hands and feet together she said: "George, you may take your foot off his neck."

She did so, they rolled him over and the surprise was double.

"Why, you're a girl! I'd have freed myself if I had known!"

"But you didn't know."

Meanwhile Susan was gasping too. "Mr ... White, right?"

He answered nothing.

"George, this is the man who would have raped me on that island in the Thames!"

People were ringing the bell furiously above. As grimly as George looked on the man, that was his luck.

"Alright, I'll open, neighbours!" And before going to fetch the key she asked: "What's your name, by the way?"

"My name is George."

Guffaw. Susan thought it odd her best friend alive and one of her worst enemies should have the same name. And George thought it odd she had the same name as this dishonest and despicable man.

"I have the extra key in the right pocket."

George digged it out of there, handed it to Susan, and she went up and opened to a worried crowd of Irish neighbours.

"It's alright, folks. We just caught a burglar."

They came down and witnessed the catch. The Gárda was called. They told the girls: "Well done, young ladies, now we take care of him."

Išvada

Gerajam gykui reikia žinoti Tolkyno ir Jurgio Luko. Aš pusgykas žinau Tolkyno. Bet Tolkynas nebuvo gykas. Nera gyko futbolininkas, nera gyko kavalerijos karininkas. Net jei išrado kalbų./HGL

(su nedidele pagalba iš Google Translate)

Sorcery Worketh Not

Midnight approached as the black cavern in the hillside was all that was not bathed in the silver light of the full moon. A pillar protruded on each side in front of the cave.

A man came along and started some funny preparations. Funny as in weird, not as in amusing really. George White had made up his black mind. He was going to do magic. Susan was going to be his.

The hairlock was there. The diverse magic items by which he was goin to invoke the dark forces were there. He knew the books of Kabbalah and similar lore. Now was the time.

He started drawing a diagram with chalk on the granite floor. One line, a corner, another line … the diagram was soon complete. He shouted out for triumph :

 « Susan, you'll be mine after all ! »

As he turned down again to draw the signs in the corners, a foot came out behind the pillar to the right. It was the foot that had kept him down in Dublin. Another one stepped out, trod on the diagram, smudged a corner. He looked up at Georgina. She waited until she had his eyes facing hers.

« Why are you so eager to damn your soul for Susan, when you can have me with no magic at all ? »

« What … what did you say, Georgina ? »

« I somehow knew I'd regret listening to that name, George. Came a warlock, called me Georgina, and hey presto, I'm … well, I'm an idiot. 

« Don't touch me yet ! You will abjure the devil and all his works and all his pomps before we are wed, or it's off. »

George White stared at her, gasped for a moment, then helped her efface the diagram.

« Guess I've been an idiot for most of my life. But I do guess I owe you that too. »

There was not a line left, just some chalk smudge, but he bowed down and swept as much off with his hand as he could. And a smile cracked across the face of Georgina.

« For how long were you standing there ? »

« Well, I had prayed a rosary all over three times before you arrived. »

« How long is that then ? »

« Ah, you won't know unless you learn to pray the rosary. »

« You might teach me ? »

« Yes, but not here and not now . » Then Georgina called back into the cave : « Julian, Dick, get out and see him burn the hairlock. »

They came out. Ann was not there, she would have thought this adventure even scarier than those she had when younger. Tim, of course was no more. But the three remaining of the Famous Five watched the hairlock take fire, burn with a flame, curdle up into burnt hair which is no longer hair. That was not the only reason : they also knew how he might have interpreted Georgina being there alone with him, so they took no risk about that.

A Letter from Remorseful Father of a Son Gone Bad

At All Hallows, Susan received a letter. It was from one Simon White "Esq." Her father who read Chesterton said these letters meant absolutely nothing, therein differing from squire which was a title lesser than knight and meant serving a knight with things like cleaning his arms or saddling his horse. Of course that is in United Kingdom, in US it is a kind of lawyer - he had added. She missed him. She missed Peter and Edmund. And of course she missed Lucy.

Most Honourable Miss Pevensie!

First of all, I would like to offer, somewhat late, my condoleances for your deceased family. I know many men and women who have lost theirs recently. Some have bourne it with courage like you ["hullo," thought Susan, "what does he know about that?"], others not.

But a greater grief to me than learning of yours was learning of the bad behaviour, indeed criminal folly of my son towards you.

He has been raised among some rude young men, who, when alone with a girl who knew they would be alone together, would think of that as an invitation to take advantage of her. ["Oh, that guy!" thought Susan.]

My son's head had a bump for a week, he told a lie about it, I just recently found out that that lie was a lie, so he had to tell me the real story.

Believe me, he told it with shame and remorse ["before his father he would have been an idiot not to"] and promised me never ever again to attempt such a thing towards you. I ask you, if at all possible, to forgive him.

Whether you do so or not, after what he tried to do to you, what I have to offer seems the very least I can do. Do not hesitate to contact me, if you should want some other service. I would be glad to wash away part of my son's guilt, and he promised he would do the same if ever you meet again.

The key is to a car which can be got at ... Car Service. The sum on the check is not so great ["we'll see about that" said Susan, as she viewed the five thousand pounds she said: "it's a small fortune"] but for the moment it was all I could do.

Do not hesitate to contact me later, should you need anything or want anything. Within reasonable limits of course.

Yours respectfully,
Simon White Esq.

She replied with some simplicity that Mr White really had not done much, and that she was for letting bygones be bygones. She thanked for the car and for the sum, which she considered handsome.

A Talk about Tolkien

"Have you heard that Tollers has published the Lord of the Rings, Audo?" This was the first time Su called Audoin Audo. And since that was the kind of familiarity she took, Audo would be sticking with that - he did not seem to mind.

"Of course. He started writing about that Sauron character and his pious adversaries in Numenor after hearing my story. Then after I had made a few abjurations in Church, he felt it was unconsiderate of him to use my story as such since it might land me into trouble with the Church."

"So then he wrote something else about that ... "

"Yes, about the horror who started out as a 'Lord of gifts', about the man or god like creature with technical solutions for everything - who contested the orthodox religion, who instituted depraved mystery cults, who finally after getting authorisation from the King started burning people to death as a sacrifice to ... another horror, as whose incarnation he posed."

"So, do you think what's in those books really happened?"

"Of course not. I am not really sure what I and pa experienced really happened, and there are some ways it theoretically could have happened according to some people which I have sworn on the Gospel not to believe. For instance, I do not believe that pa and I were Elendil and Herendil in a previous life. I do not believe we have lived previous lifetimes."

"So where did Tolkien get this story from?"

"He invented it. Just because Jack got the Narnia books so far published from Professor Kirke and much of it from you and your siblings, it does not mean every author gets every story from a true witness source."

"So, Numenor was part of your and your father's dream experience, it contained a kind of warning against the Antichrist, especially against how seductive he could be and how manipulative of people who refuse to be considered stupid because they are faithful ..." Susan paused, and resumed: "and since Tollers could not use that dream without hurting your standing with the Church ..."

"He wrote another story about it, with Numenor already sunken like the great Babylon was already fallen, and it ends in a kind of prehistoric Harmageddon, but only because he liked the morality of my dream or whatever it was, and wanted to write something on that moral theme."

"Could you read Namarië? I mean you did know Quenya 'back in Númenor'?"

"Some of it, but Tollers, once having decided not to use my story as such, started changing whatever he took from it according to his taste in either morality or - in this case - linguistics."

"So reading the Quenya of Lord of the Rings is like ..."

"Reading Braid Scots, or for a Portuguese to read Spanish or for a Dane to read Swedish."

"Don't you resent that?"

"Why? It means it is no more my story, it is as such not a story gotten through any esoteric experience, and it means I am again free to enjoy it as if I had never been upbraided by the Church for it. I did ask my confessor as soon as the Fellowship was published."

"Has he falsified your history?"

"Since I have been suspect of having received as a live experience it through demons, I would rather say he has rescued it from Hell. A made up story is better than one gotten from demons, any day."

[This author here - Hans-Georg Lundahl by the way - might like to make clear that he is in a position like John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's when writing, not in a position like Audoin Errol's if he had written the story. Still less in the position of that evil sham "lord of gifts" who poisoned every gift he gave with devil worship.]

Susan is Free, So are the Policemen

"Take us down!" The two policemen were struggling to get loose of the branches, but these were locked tight around them.

"I cannot," said Susan.

"We will not be trying to take you to asylum if you only take us down!"

"Nice, but as said I cannot. Seems the trees had a will of their own."

And on they went for hours and hours, sometimes stopping silent because their throats were dry. Most of the time Susan ignored them. She was freezing.

In the morning dawn was beginning to rise in the east. First it was slightly grey, then a bit of rose, soon it was even red. Then rose the sun. She looked over there, then on the road under the hill, and for a moment it looked like a lion, like Aslan had looked in Narnia. "Aslan!" she smiled. Inside her heart she heard him say "In this world I have another name." Then round the corner came walking a priest in cassock. "He's carrying the sacrament, he's carrying you my Lord!" she said. Which was true. He had spent the last hours with a dying parishioner. And he carried the sacrament in his cassock.

The priest was rather old, and walking slowly, but when he arrived he looked up and asked: "what is this?"

"The trees took us up in the branches and won't let us down!" bellowed the policeman.

"Can't have that." The priest started out for an exorcism, but he did not have to, as soon as he had said "In nomine + Patris et + Filii et + Spiritus Sancti" the trees obeyed his will and gently put the policemen down. He continued with a shorter exorcism, and the branches waved slightly in the wind as if the beech trees were enjoying it.

"And what were you up to when they did so?"

They pointed at Susan who was kneeling before the priest and awaiting a blessing. "We were taking this lady to asylum."

"Why?"

"Seems she is mad."

"Yes, believes in walking trees and things like that ..."

"And if you get her and tell them you had to wait a few hours because you were caught in trees?"

The two policemen looked at each other. They decided the less they said about this story the better. They did not look as if they were eager to take another try on Susan.

The priest looked at Susan who was waiting to kiss his hand a get a blessing. He blessed her. Then she said to the policemen: "she does not seem mad to me. You may have got the instructions wrong or the instructions may have been wrong to start with."

They went off. The priest asked Susan to accompany him to the Church in Warwick. It was called St Mary Immaculate.

"Now, you may wonder why I took that elfish thing so lightly, but ... you see, I had a parishioner who was suspect of believing he was reincarnated from someone else. He abjured that of course, but he gave a few indications that if that was not the case, he and his father had been doing some time travel. I cannot make out if their final destination was Nod East of Eden or if Atlantis had a separate and smaller flood, but ... he's honest and it seems a certain Lowdham gave independent evidence about the story."

"Time travel back to the flood or Atlantis? Sounds a bit exotic?"

"It seems you had some similar experience?"

"Not quite time travel, but in a way, yes. I came twice to another world, whatever its ontological status, whether it was another creation of God or a kind of vision. For me it was a year between the visits, but for people there it was a thousand years or more."

"I think you will enjoy the company of Mr. Errol."

They went on. As Susan and the priest walked by the Avon in the Mill Garden, three maidens rose up from it, very watery in appearance. As Susan had lived very long in Narnia, she knew they were Naiads. And they started clapping their hands, it sounded like when dolphins clap their forefins.

For a moment she wondered if they were honouring her as Queen of Naiads and "Narnian creatures" even here, but then she remembred she was walking by a priest and that he was keeping the Blessed Sacrament which he had been giving to a dying person the night before.

She bowed down before the priest and asked him "do you think the River Maidens want a Sacramental blessing too?"

And the priest took forth the little tin box in which he carried the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who took Manhood through the Virgin and who conquered Death on the Cross, and he lifted it high up to start a cruciform blessing.

And Susan bent down on her knees, and the Naiads bent themselves down to the waist before the priest or rather before God whom he was holding, and the priest made the sign of the cross over them, and the Naiads signed themselves, and then clapped hands again, and then dove down.

And he made another blessing over Susan as well. She also signed herself.

And I suppose certain readers would like to know whether the Naiads signed themselves from the left to the right or from the right to the left, but Susan did not tell.

Wedding in Cornwall

Audoin decided he wanted to accept the offer from Kirrin Island. And Susan of course had nothing against it.

In St Mary Immaculate three sundays on a row the announcement was made that on Saturday 31st of July Audoin Errol would marry Susan Pevensie in the Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows chapel in a little village on the coast of Cornwall.

And it was a beautiful wedding. Susan was a bride in white, Audoin had a white tail suit and bow tie. The choir was small but very musical, but above all, in that day and moment, two lonesome people (as Audoin was and as Susan had become after the railway accident) said farewell for ever to loneliness and to certain hardships that go along with it. They took Our Lord's Body after vowing fidelity, and they prayed. After the wedding the priest also placed the brown scapular on Susan's shoulders and on Audoin's.

While the other went off to the feast, Audoin and Susan and the priest read the Vespers, Compline and Matins of the Little Office of Our Lady, than they went on to join the others. The priest gave them a dispensation to skip Matins this time.

George announced she was going to marry Mr White. Yes, the very same guy who had tried to ravish Susan and who had also helped her out of Mental Hospital.

"But he's Jewish?"

"Well, he is preparing for baptism."

"Oh, good for you."

Rose showed her a girl four years old now. "This is the girl you helped to save, back then. She is called Susan, obviously."

"And what about her father?"

"Well, the principal did not marry me, and I don't think I would have married him after he proposed abortion. But Nobby's cousin took extra good care of me - here he is by the way ..."

And there came a somewhat darker copy - and younger too - of Nobby out behind the corner of the inn, Susan had not noticed him in Church. He carried a boy on his arm. And another one toddled behind. "It is an honour for us to be present when she who saved our baby is getting married. I am Bobby and these are Peter and Paul."

"And I am pleased to meet you. Glad Rose made a good party."

"So am I," said Audoin.

A telegram of congratulations was also arriving from Setúbal in Portugal. Roy Campbell had moved there.

The port - which was a gift from Roy and his wife - was getting emptied in the glasses and they went in to the feast.

George's cousin Dick was the cook - and in Cornwall seafood was plenty. Flanders and Swann entertained at the piano. Dancing was done till late at night. Then people noticed that Susan and Audoin were gone. Off to Kirrin Island.

Just to make sure they were in the right place, a few girls from the tinker camp went on to the island too and went to the little hut. At some distance they sang a song which Donald Swann had composed, not quite the style of his comic songs with Flanders, but rather more romantic, and when Susan and Audoin showed their faces behind a linen sheet in the window, they clamoured for her garter.

She threw it out of the window, and the girl who caught the garter was sure to be married during the year. But then Susan and Audoin shut the shutters and the gipsy girls pretended to be disappointed - then went roaming off to the shore, left a few gifts, including not a little food, and Rose had given them Lucy's essay note book to leave Susan as a farewell gift from her, so they left that too and they took the boat and went back to the main land. It was a calm summer evening and full moon and it could be done without danger.

In the morning Susan and Audoin woke up late and after dressing, praying the minor hours of the Little Office of Our Lady - together and alone for the first time - and taking a cup of tea walked down the cliffs to the beach and thankfully noted the gifts of the giggling gipsy girls. Susan was glad to see the notebook again. And Audoin was curious about it too.

And How was Mental Hospital?

Susan was sitting in a chair when she got company. A fat man with a thick neck.

"My name is Jack."

"Nice to meet you."

"Jack the Ripper."

"Isn't he dead?"

"I'm Jack the Ripper in a new reincarnation."

"Whatever ..."

"I am here because I killed my fiancée and then cooked and ate her ..." (I will not print the word he used, but this shocked Susan).

"Don't be gross!"

"But I really did that."

"Why have they not hung you yet, then?"

The fat man started shouting:

"Boohoo, she wants to hang me ..."

Guards rushed to them, and surrounded her:

"Don't speak to him like that."

"Humour him."

"He's dangerous."

"He killed and ate his fiancée."

Susan looked around and then asked:

"If that is the case, why has he not been hung?"

They looked like grownups trying to calm a child in a tantrum, but they were not adressing the fat man:

"Now calm down."

"We all have condemning and judgemental moments."

"But we must not let that get the better of us."

"You see, he is ill, very ill. That is why he killed and ate his fiancée."

"To me that seems just like being evil."

"Ah, don't use that word! We do not use it here."

"And if I do use it? Evil, evil, evil ... that man is evil."

They drew closer.

"We'll have to treat you."

"No! Not her!" said a voice she knew. It was the man who had tried to rape her on that outing in the Thames. The man whose father was Simon White. "Not her, I know her. I will talk to her."

They withdrew a few yards, the fat man who thought he was an incarnation of Jack the Ripper was gone, and there was her nearly ravisher. "Sit down, you don't need to talk to me. And you don't need to be afraid of me either."

She did sit down again.

"Jack the Ripper, as we call him, is ill. So are you. Even worse than he. He thinks he is an incarnation of Jack the Ripper. You think you ARE the heroine of a children's story, Susan Pevensie gone to Narnia with her siblings. That is worse."

She said nothing.

"However, I owe you one. This once I will help you out. If you come back, I might remember that oar on my head."

"You deserved it."

"We don't use that word."

She realised the horrible truth that psychiatry was as hard a prison as any, or worse, but dealing with people not according to their merits and demerits, but is only concerned with how bad a doctor thinks one is. She shuddered. She "thought" she was Susan Pevensie, even if she had not actually said so. That made her more "ill" than a man who thought of himself merely as a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, even if he acted accordingly.

"Now, here is how we do it ..."

The man had knowledge of a part of nurse Cecily's life that might land her as a patient there. So he had no problem doing some extortion to get her along with his plan. She and Susan exchanged clothes, she was locked up in a padded cell, Susan sat wearing her clothes and speaking in a friendly way to the patients until the evening came. She went out in company with Mr White.

"Be careful, and soon Cecily will be free and you will be on the run. Remember."

She paid the bus ticket with money in Cecily's hand bag. When she was gone, safe distance from the hospital, she started crying. If Mr. White had not been a criminal who had wronged her and if Cecily (the sweet girl) had not had some foible unknown to others which he could use to lock her up as a patient, then she, Susan, would still have been there. And not had any idea whatsoever of how she could get out from company like the "reincarnation of Jack the Ripper" or the people who thought herself about as ill or worse than he. She was glad she had not eaten, or she would have been sick.

Mr. Errol Proposes

"I can't believe you shot two policemen in the arms - shoulder and elbow's inside - like that. Archery like that is rare."

"I might have been better back then, or it may have been a moment of grace."

"There are some targets set up behind my house, and the distance would be daunting to a beginner."

Susan picked up her ears: " .. and bows and arrows?"

"Two bows, an abundance of arrows, try not to hit my arms, please."

"I will take the request into consideration."

Hundred and fifty feet to the targets was the distance. Two targets. Susan stood to the right, Audoin to the left. "Ladies first," said he. Susan put an arrow straight into the bull's eye of the right target. Audoin got his arrow onto the right target next to hers.

"You did that on purpose!"

"Ah no, I just missed my target."

"You just pretend to. Why, I think you are flirting with me!"

"Nonsense, I will try to do better next time."

Susan now got her arrow into the bull's eye of the left target and said "sorry". Audoin got his next to hers again, and as he had promised it was in his own target. Susan was straight after with an arrow between the two. Audoin put one between the two of the right hand target. A few arrows later on each side the bulls eyes looked like a pair of hedgehogs.

"If you are that good with bow and arrows, you ought to have children."

"Why?" Susan smiled blithely because the comment surprised her.

"Sicut sagitte in manu potentis, ita filii excussorum.

Beatus qui impleuit desiderium suum ex ipsis,

Non confundetur cum loquetur inimicis suis in porta."

"Consider my Latin to be non-existent. This means?"

"'As arrows in the hand of the mighty, thus are the children of the vanquished. Blessed who hath fulfilled his - or her - desire for them, he shall not be confounded when speaking to his enemies in court.' Basically. 'In porta' means 'at the city gates', because in old Israel city gates looked a bit like the lodge of a college in Oxford, and court proceedings were conducted in them."

"There is the slight problem of my knowing no man, and the Virgin Birth was once only. Mother and maiden was never none but she, remember."

"If lack of husband is all there is to that, I would be happy to change the situation. May I?"

She looked at the man, ten years older than herself for some moments. He did not flinch from the scrutiny, so she laughed out loud and said: "You may." Whereupon she gave him the hand, as for getting on the dance floor. They walked back hand in hand.

Four Bad Men Discussing Susan

Four men were discussing in some kind of club or lodge.

"What is Narnia?"

"According to my patient, it is all a game they made up when smaller."

"So what made Professor Kirke and Miss Plummer play along with it then?"

"That is why I said 'according to my patient' - because, the other patient, her sister, seems not to agree. Do you know what she said? 'It is real, and that is all I can tell you' she said."

"With that attitude she should have been staying longer?"

Now another man joined the conversation. One Susan knew somewhat well since yesterday night. The one who had envied the Dresden bombers, who had wanted to be one of the pilots of the bomb plane over Dresden. The fourth she knew also, it was the one who had plagiarised C. S. Lewis' story about captives giving themselves up to him, reusing it far less realistically of the newer war of 40-45. The one who had tried to ravish Susan. But best of all Susan knew the second of the two speakers: it was her thereapist. A married man and too moral to have affairs with her, though not too moral to push her into flirting on dances. A man who had daughters her own age. Nevertheless, as he had shown about Lucy: a traitor. A man who believed in betraying people for their own good. Susan could have described him on the spot if you had asked her: a kind, funny, generous man, five years younger than Professor Kirke, stodgy, round-faced, a few white hairs in the general brown curls, a somewhat big nose. A man named Nathan Coon, a doctor of medicine, specialised in psychiatry. Only the first speaker she did not know yet. He was a police officer and he was short and thin. He was - in their secretive context - a living idol to the other three, they were less afraid to displease God (if they were not downright atheists) than to displease him or even just not quite live up to his expectations. But Susan's inopportune suitor from yesterday, the man so eager to kill "Nazis" even if civilians, opened his mouth:

"It was impossible to keep Lucy. Her brother had a position inthe army, he was popular, he made a whole platoon excited about getting Lucy loose from the loony-bin!"

"And there was no military discipline to deal with him?"

"If Lucy was released, as she was, he agreed with his captain to take a longer vacation, despite the leave he had aleready enjoyed when going to the estate of the Ketterley-Kirke's. He had briefly been in military prison, but the platoon threatened mutiny to get him out."

Susan's other heavyhanded suitor said: "We'll have to deal with him."

The thin man said in a very dry and curt voice: "We did."

"What do you mean?" said the therapist. "You have not put him in mental care, or I would have known."

"He's dead."

"The traincrash in Sevenoaks tonight?" He had paid little attention to the news in the radio. But he did know that train crashes kill people.

"Exactly."

"How do you know it was us?"

"Come on! You do not expect a thing like that from British Railways, if they have accidents they are arranged right?"

"Not even British Railways is fool proof."

"No, it is not," snapped the small one.

"You know who did it?"

"Of course not! I cannot say for certain even whether it was strictly speaking us or a rival faction.

"Then why so sure the accident was no accident?"

"Enough! I see you are a sceptic, Nathan. But you have a patient to see, her family is dead, she is mourning. Now is the time to get at her if we are to get to the bottom of the 'two battles of Beruna' that she won without killing non-combatants, remember?"

Dr Coon knew better than to contradict, he said farewell to the other three and went off. Once he was gone the short man continued, musing: "There are no accidents. Our enemy once said: 'not one sparrow falleth to the ground least it be the will of the father'. If it is not humanly us, it must have been the Almighty."

He said the last word with a certain shudder, all three went silent for a minute. As he had quoted the Sermon of the Mount as coming from what he called "our enemy" we can be certain none of the four were Christians, at least not believing and practising ones.

Despenalizar las relaciones sexuales entre adolescentes?

1) La Marcha de los indignados, 2) Carlismo de izquierda comunismo o no?, 3) Uno como otro no es malo como solución en algunos casos ..., 4) Respuesta de un Carlista sobre Propriedad Privada y Montejurra '76, 5) Despenalizar las relaciones sexuales entre adolescentes?, 6) Enfrente a un defensor de maraconías ..., 7) Cual fue la ley anterior a 1929?, 8) Quienes fueron los enemigos de los gitanos?, 9) Cuando Matteotti fue matado, Mussolini a condenado a los asesinos ...., 10) Mercado, estudios y otras cosas (entre carlistas en FB), 11) La tradición carlista como yo - un sueco - la conozco y honro., 12) A transmeter a Esteban Morillo, 13) Hé leido que el video le inocenta!, 14) Contra el Maniqueismo

En el matrimonio, cuando una o los dos de los casados son adolescentes espera que ne sea penalizado! La edad canónica es 12 para la mujer, 14 para el marido. Es por el menos dudoso si le Iglesia pudía, durante el XX sieglo alzar la edad canónica de dos años por cada uno de los dos sexos. Porqué es cierto que no pudía estar en error la Iglesia antes. Y porqué una ley universal de la Iglesia tiene que ser fundada en la natura humana y no en circunstancias de hoy y de ayer en los paises occidentales y industrializados.

En la sodomía fuese mejor penalizar no solo cuando uno o los dos son adolescentes, peró cuando los dos son grandes también.

Fuera del matrimonio, peró entre dos personas de dos sexos, es a distinguir:

• cuando la vírgen, adolescente o no, está seducida por un hombre quien puede casarse con ella, y la seducida o su padre quiere que él repara el daño casandose con ella, y él consiente, no tiene que ser penalizado;
• cuando el hombre no quiere casarse con la seducida quién fue virgen antes de ser seducida, o cuando es un hombre que no puede casarla porqué es sacerdote o casado con otra peró la vírgen no lo sabía, y la seducida o su padre lo quiere, tiene que ser penalizado, hasta por la muerte para un laico (ver el Alcalde de Zalamea) o la laicisación para un sacerdote;
• cuando está seguro que la vírgen y su padre son contientos con la dote y el culpable paga, por ejemplo cuando sabía que está un casado con otra o sacerdote no tiene que ser penalizado por el estado, peró un sacerdote puede que ser laicisado (si eso corresponde a la vieja ley canónica) por la Iglesia;
• cuando no quiere mismo pagar tiene que ser penalizado;
• cuando la seducida ya no fue vírgen, y no hubo violació, no hay crímen;
• abortamiente tiene que ser repenalizado también, en este caso: cárcel por una jóven y muerte por una grande que aborta y muerte por el doctor quien aborta (al menos que ciertas circunstancias rinden el crímen más excusable, por ejemplo cuando fue un verdadero riesgo para la vida del madre, peró eso tampoco sin pena), no hay que dejar un pseudo derecho a hacer y pues matar niños.

Eso es - volver a la legislación bajo los Reyes Católicos y bajo Felipe II.

Este paquete preso en globo no es malo. Peró solo despenalizar las relaciones sexuales con adolescentes y no volver a la vieja y buena legislación en otras cosas fuese muy malo. Es cosa mala a penalizar más el matrimonio que la fornicación por ejemplo. O permeter abortamiento peró no matrimonio por ejemplo.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Biblioteca Georges Pompidou
París
El 5-VII-2012

Speaking to Dr Watson

After agreeing with her confessor she would ask medical though not psychiatric advice, Susan went to visit a Dr Watson living in Baker Street - in the room his father had rented along with Sherlock Holmes back in last century, after the Afghanistan War. They talked a bit to make sure they understood what the case was about, they ruled out common causes of hallucination like fever or drunkenness. Then she asked if she could have been hypnotised.

"If you were hypnotised by someone," said Dr Watson, "that means you would feel as if you awoke just the moment after getting into trance."

"Right. But would it explain living for years in a place, or even days, and then being sure from everyone else and everything else that it really was the next moment?"

"No. A minor epileptic seizure might do that."

"I am not epileptic. I have never woken up with saliva from my mouth lying on the floor."

"Oh, that is a major seizure. A minor seizure is not like that."

"And you think four persons would have the same epileptic seizures?"

"At the same moment, no. How do we know it was at the same moment?"

"We all got into the wardrobe when avoiding Mrs Macready."

"And you all came out of it ... besides four minor epileptic seizures all of them when entering a wardrobe. A bit thick."

"And it cannot be schizophrenia giving false memories? I mean that is what they wannted to treat Lucy and later me for?"

"Oh, no. Hallucinations from schizophrenia - I suppose that is what you mean by false memories - do occur more and more often, and during periods of emotional stress. You said that all the years you were on the run, you never 'were in Narnia' at all? Only remembered having been previously?"

"Absolutely."

"And that previously was during those two occasions: the wardrobe occasion in 1940, the railway station in 1941?"

"That's for me and Peter. Lucy and Edmund came back once more."

"You know that?"

"I read the essay Lucy wrote about some side issues when she, Ed and Eustace were telling the story to Peter, Professor Kirke and Polly."

"No, there is no known mental illness on record that would give such symptoms."

"Then I am sane?"

"And the others were too, unless we find it was over excitement to try to get to Narnia actively for the Narnian spook."

"Lucy didn't try. She only went along with the others, and she talked to father and mother on the train to Bristol, and then the train back."

"But if I really am not mentally ill, which I don't find all that likely anyway, that means something supernatural happened."

"So?"

"Aren't scientists supposed to leave out the supernatural in all explanations?"

"No, only in standard theoretic explanations. And as far as the science is concerned. Medicine deals with bacteria. It doesn't take sides in the further debate whether angels and demons influence bacteria."

Susan looked a bit attentive.

"You see, if we want to do something about the divine and diabolic factors involved in either healing or someone getting ill, you do not go to a doctor. That is why doctors can very safely leave all that out. There are priests - of diverse priesthoods - dealing with that. But first doctors do what we can about bacteria."

"So you mean you do not exclude that devils can bring on sickness, say by favouring bacteria, or that angels and God himself can kill bacteria off with no desinfectants or antibiotics, you just leave that to another profession like a Catholic priest in case it is a Catholic patient."

"A Catholic priest or a Catholic pilgrimage with miraculous healings. We make sure all that can be made by our rationality of medicine is applied first, but once that is done we don't stop them from going to a pilgrimage to Lourdes."

"Are people healed there?"

"Doctors there are well paid and loose their jobs if admitting one miracle. Why would some of them lie about unexplained - scientifically that is, leaving theological explanations to the Church - and sometimes unexplainable healings, unless they had seen them?"

"Examples?"

"Do you know what tubercular peritonitis is?"

"A bit, ma was a midwife. All through my childhood we might wake up for a telephone call even in the night and she would have to get and deliver a baby. Now, some cases of tubercular peritonitis are related to female genitalia. So, she has heard of it, since a relative of one she delivered a baby for died in it. She never described what it was very clearly, except that it would make us throw up if she did."

"I bet she was pretty right on that one." Dr Watson gave Susan an opened example of an old page of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September 11, 1890. The article* was signed Leonard Wheeler, M.D. She read it and shuddered.

"So, both cases were operated, and yet both patients died?"

"Yes. Tissue was totally unrecognisable from what it should be. No chance of restoring a function by reorientation. No chance of merely removing a cause of sickness and be sure all would be well. But do you know what happened in Lourdes? A boy with this devilish disease had come to Lourdes and not been healed there. On the train he played with a girl who had been healed. Then he came back to his parents and told them: 'I am hungry.' I heard this when our friend J.R.R. Tolkien brought me to listen to a sermon on Lourdes, I know he wrote a letter to his son on the case.** Now, after reading that, what do you make of a phrase like 'I am hungry'?"

"A clear miracle. Ascitic fluid disappeared, stiff arteries restored to functional, holes filled and accretions removed from parietes, and those to restored from brittle ex-flesh to useful tissue. That would be a case where medicine cannot say anything except a miracle."

"Yes, a miracle. And that is another reason I cannot argue that you are mentally ill because you have seen a miraculous event. I need to go to the countryside for a few weeks, you may keep my room for as long as you need until I come back. Here are the kees, I will write the bishop and the medical association to have your psychiatrist from 1950 excluded from it. Have a good day, ma'am, I have a train to catch."



* Link to article is Vol. CXXIII, No. 11, p. 241:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM189009111231101

** See Letters by Tolkien. Letter 99.

Susan Goes Short Haired for a While

It was close to November, and the spell of warm weather, often known as Indian Summer, drew to an end. Suddenly. Susan and Roy had been talking on and on, but clouds drew up on the horizon. Big clouds.

"Jolly," said Susan. "We just needed a few drops for a little change. And of course it won't be cold at all!"

It was already colder. Sun was sinking below the clouds and ... well, it was not warm.

"Let us stop at the next town. We need to get you a haircut and a train ticket, and we may be far enough away to stop safely. At least small country towns are not among the most vigilant unless you have been described in the news as really dangerous."

"Not all that sure about that. Where would I be going, do you think?"

"Don't tell me where - I'll give you the money for anything between Holyhead and Glasgow, then you choose."

They came to a village. It was marked Wickhamford. There was a pub called Sandys Arms. Roy stopped the car outside. He told her not to be stingy on his behalf, he would pay. Zulu nation's honour. They went in, and the clouds were getting closer and the sky darker.

"What do you like for now? Hot, strong or both?"

"Both."

Roy turned to the barman, a rather longfaced and ceremonial man with big red whiskers: "a hot toddy for the lady - use lemon - and a beer for me. A pint. Do you have lager, I am South African?"

"I can hear that, now you say so, and yes we do have lager." The barman turned to his presumably wife, both being in their forties or fifties: "Anne, do you mind making a toddy for a lass who's out travelling in cold weather?"

"Oh, not at all." She went off to the kitchen to get the kettle and was back with the toddy for Susan before Roy's lager was tapped. "Anything to eat?"

"Yes." Susan relied on the resources and generosity of Roy. "Some toast would just be lovely."

"Ham and cheese, half of each," Roy added. "And in plenty."

"Hear that?" said the barman to his wife. "Here are folks who know how to order properly."

"Toast will be ready in a minute or two, hope you do not mind, ma'am!"

"Oh, I'll be fine."

Roy asked the barman:

"Is there a railway station close to here?"

"Evesham is not far. And in case the young lady happens to be a certain Susan Pevensie we've been hearing about on the radio, there is a hairdresser and a shop for clothing there too, if you hurry up."

Ouch, so much for villagers not taking broadcasted descriptions about her seriously.

"You need not look scared, young lady. We are not giving you over to policemen or asylum. We think you did quite well to shoot arrows on policemen when they were - and totally illegally, mind you! - trying to force the girl to an appointment which would have meant an abortion."

"Well, have you heard anything about the girl?"

"No, not except for her description and that of a friend of yours, a shorthaired redhead. Neither have been caught so far."

"That is a relief."

She ate with gusto, and Roy ate too, though the beer was part of his meal.

"How much is it?"

"Four you ma'am and for whoever you are helping her, it is free. Isn't that right, Anne?"

"Absolutely."

Once in Evesham she got her hair short for some time, like bobbed. And she bought a new dress, in green. And a handbag. And the railway ticket for Midland Railway was not too expensive. She spent the evening in Birmingham and felt safe when hearing the description. She took a bed and breakfast lodging, and in the morning she was off to Holyhead and Ireland. I mean, not only had she formally converted, though her belief faltered after that, she was also against abortion much more firmly than some people she could mention in England ... On the train station in Birmingham she said to herself she would take a look at Roy Campbell's books, which he had given her. In the train it was first Essays Presented to Charles Williams, compiled by C. S. Lewis, that caught her eyes, and she started with On Fairy-Stories, by Tolkien. He had of course known her sister, and she had seen the Birmingham Oratory while walking to the station. She signed herself with the cross while passing.