The Sixth Station(133)
As she ran toward the altar, a rotund brown-robed monk bounded up the altar’s staircase and grabbed the heavy gilded frame off its pedestal. Holding it tightly to his chest, he ran down the stairs and disappeared through a door in an archway. The metallic sound of the lock resonated loudly within the perfect acoustics of the church.
The old lady was going to steal the frame!
I followed Grethe as she frantically ran after him, yelling over and over, “Jesus! Retten Sie Ihre Sohn! Jesus! Retten Sie Ihre Sohn!”
When she finally reached the locked door, instead of pounding on it, as I had fully expected, she turned around and spied me through the edge of her veil.
“Come, come. Hurry now, we must keep out the devil!”
She reached into her habit and pulled out a big ring of keys and quickly unlocked the door and slammed it behind us. I could hear footsteps on the other side of the door frantically running this way and that.
“It is Satan,” she said now calmly, as though this were an everyday visitor, and began humming some hymn or other.
I followed her as she scurried up a long metal staircase to the second floor. A door at the top opened onto what looked like a reliquary museum. Along the walls were letters, photos, military medals, and many, many old braids of human hair behind glass showcases.
I followed her to the end of the long corridor, and we stopped before a wooden door. She unlocked the door, and we entered a room entirely lit by candles except for one old metal, dimly lit small chandelier way up on the ceiling.
This small room was again adorned with what looked like bizarre relics—more human hair braids, a human femur behind a glass case, a shelf with human skulls, and many worn, ancient-looking books and bits of papyrus.
At the front of the room six monks were lying prostrate on prayer rugs on the floor before a tiny altar. A door at the back of the room opened, and the rotund monk entered carrying the very elaborate gold frame. Now I could see, without the sunlight hitting it, that there was indeed something inside it. That gauzy fabric I’d seen did have an image imprinted upon it after all. The face, though quite transparent, was that of the same bearded man I’d seen in the transparency, but now he appeared, oddly enough, to be smiling.
This looks like a joke. A cosmic joke.
It measured maybe seven or so inches by ten, and was stretched between two framed panes of glass.
As I looked at it, I could see the wavy horizontal threads, but otherwise, the fabric was so thin and transparent that I could see the monk’s hand holding the image right through the other side.
The effigy itself was the same long-haired man with a broken nose, a bloodstained or bruised forehead, and swollen cheek. Upon closer inspection, he looked uncannily like the photos of the torture victims in the current wars.
The contrasting shades of brown on the man’s face in this dim candlelight made the bruises look almost fresh. But again, it was his eyes that captured me. They seemed to be looking directly at me—almost as though they were content despite his injuries.
What the hell?
I had to photograph this image. But I couldn’t imagine that they’d let me. So I gingerly took out Sadowski’s phone and gestured for permission. Not only did the monk allow it, he seemed to encourage me to take many photos, which of course I did. But this time, I made sure to check that the global tracking was off.
As swiftly as he’d granted permission, the monk grabbed the phone from my hand and started scrolling through the pictures I’d shot. As he did, tears started running down his face, and he passed the phone around to the other monks, who also began to weep.
He handed me back the phone and told me to scroll, which I did. I didn’t start crying myself, but I knew why they had. What I saw couldn’t be—could it?
Every single photo of that same image held a totally different expression. In one, the image was slightly smiling, with his lips closed and his eyes heavily hooded. In the next, he appeared to be screaming, with his mouth wide open, his teeth bared, his eyes open in terror. In yet another, he bore a calm demeanor, as though he were a man at total peace. This last one was almost expressionless—yet the face was the same face as in the transparency I’d gotten from Badde.
But how could these photos all be so very different? They were taken in rapid succession without any difference in lighting or angle. It was triple what I’d seen changing in the transparencies.
As I was turning the phone this way and that, I noticed all the monks rise and head toward me.
“Ecce electus! Ecce electus!” (“Behold the Chosen One!”) they chanted, coming closer. “Pater noster qui es in caelis, tuum; adveniat regnum tuum…” It was the same chant I’d heard those monks in Turkey sing as they entered the House of the Virgin.