Death of Torkvemada
Thomas de Torkvemada10 was sitting on the bed, barricaded in his chambers. He reduced his world to the size of three rooms and even that was beginning to look too big now ‘I guess it was inevitable’ this thought brought tiredness and fear. "Why can’t I just die" he said to an empty room. And as much as he wanted to, he was unusually fit for seventy eight years old. Nothing suggested near death. He prayed for several hours a day. He never prayed so much in his entire life, but God wasn’t listening and the sweet release of death wasn’t coming. Thomas was afraid. Not of death, not really. He was afraid his death wouldn’t be just an easy passing, but something else.
It all started about ten years ago, when he first dreamed about the black hole. In this dream he was as usual looking at the execution of one of the marranos 11 and suddenly instead of fire and burning flesh, a black hole appeared. With all his will Torkvemada tried to see past the darkness of it, but there was nothing. He woke up screaming. From that day he hardly ever left his chambers and even when he did, he surrounded himself with hundreds of men. This brought a great uncertainty into his life and that was a hard blow for Thomas.
He remembered himself as a young man who was sure of himself and what he wanted in life. It was simple; he needed to get to the top. And he did that relatively easy (he was not without a talent), but somewhere along the way Thomas lost a clear picture of what he wished for. He couldn’t say whether it was power or money, maybe love and respect, perhaps loyalty. Whatever it was he didn’t remember. Life became a blur that consisted only of distraction. Why? There was no reason, or at least he couldn’t name one. He was killing people just to kill, it was simple as that.
Shortly after he realized it, dreams started. Was there connection? He didn’t know. Maybe there was, but it was irrelevant now, what was done could not be undone. Dreams became more frequent in time and in the last year it got to the point where he hardly ever slept. He stopped going outside of his rooms and three days ago he refused to let his maid in, completely cutting himself from the rest of the world.
The late visit of Isabella12 was the last trigger for his paranoia to take the next level. She was the only one he ever trusted, the only one with whom he felt some sort of closeness. Not this time. This time he saw danger, even in her. Thomas couldn’t take it any more. He would wait for his end in these rooms. There was nothing outside that he needed.
He heard the noise on the other side of the door. That must be his maid, brining his food. He left her specific instructions how to handle it. Bring nothing but vegetables and some bread; slide it into the hole in the door and that to be done no more than twice a day.
Thomas walked to the door picked up the plate of carrots, baked potatoes, some cucumbers and piece of bread and went to the cage where he kept his rats. He gave rats a piece of everything that was on the plate and started to wait for the effect. The biggest paradox of his life was that even though Thomas whished to die he was afraid of any cause of unnatural death. For some unexplained reason he thought something terrible would happen to him afterwards. But if he had happen to die of natural causes he would somehow escape any possibility of going to hell and would get straight to haven.
When Thomas turned around, he saw his Father, who was dead for a long time now, standing by the cupboard watching him. Thomas smiled in relief "Finally, it’s time"
Just as he said that, his father’s face grimaced in agonizing pain and before his eyes he lit on fire. Thomas recoiled dropping the plate, and bumping the table with his back turned over the cage with rats. He sat heavily on the floor watching his father burn and that’s when the black hole appeared, same as in his dreams. The possibility of this being another of his nightmares never crossed Thomas’s mind. Maddening horror of this moment squeezed any last drop of emotional self - control he had. Just when Thomas thought that he was in hell and it couldn’t possibly get any worse, something even darker than utter darkness of the hole materialized inside it. Thomas could see the shape of the man advancing until his face became the black hole itself.
He saw his father again, but this time his father bore a mad grin. He saw his father was getting closer and he had a rusty fork in his arm. His father reached for him and started to gouge his eyes out. He felt every bit of pain, but could not move. Thomas thought pain was never going to end, but next he felt himself being a rabbit. He knew he was Thomas de Torkvemada, but he was also a rabbit, looking into the eyes of an enormous snake. He felt every bit of hopelessness and when the snake started to swallow him whole, he felt every bit of suffocating revulsion that he never would’ve thought was possible to imagine. He was burned, he was broken, he died fast and he died slowly. He died thousands, millions of times, in thousands, millions different ways and each felt as first. And when the hell ended, he saw something he knew he could not comprehend, but still he understood the doom, the insanity of this no- place. He saw the fear, he saw the eternity, he saw the unknown.
--
As her master ordered Catalina slid the plate with food through the gap in the door and stayed to see if he heard her coming. Maybe he would let her in. But even if not, just to hear his footsteps would be enough. Catalina was Torkvemada’s servant for over thirty five years. She was twenty when he took her in and often she did more for him than just cleaning his sheets and bringing him food. He didn’t show her much of compassion although they’d been intimate many times, but still to her he was everything. And no matter what terrible things people were saying about him she always believed him to be a great man, a saint perhaps. So now just hearing him walk around filled her with joy.
One moment she was smiling thinking about her master and in the next she was pressing her hands against her ears with her eyes pooping out and mouth opened in a mute shout of horror. The second she heard the scream coming out of her master’s cambers her hair, touched by silver only in few places, turned completely white.
The unbearable scream coming from Torkvemada’s rooms continued for over a day until it stopped. No one dared to come close to the rooms. In fact the entire wing of the castle was emptied and the next highest inquisitors after Torkvemada himself forbade anyone to speak of what happened under the penalty of death. Catalina was secretly placed under the care of nuns and everything went back to normal. No one came to Thomas aid; he was left alone to scream endlessly with horror.
Thomas de Torkvemada died 16 of October 1498 and buried with honours. If anyone in his staff was asked how he died the answer would be- peacefully with a smile on his face, as if he was embraced by Jesus himself. And yet no one saw his face. He was buried in a closed casket.
Agent of terror
Joseph was sitting behind his kitchen table fully dressed, waiting for Gestapo. He was told to do so and obedient man that he was, he didn’t think to object. He had an idea that this visit was not a harmless kind. In fact, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be back once they take him to whatever place Gestapo was taking the Jews these days. But he couldn’t care less. He was dying. Joseph lived for eighty years and had not a single day to regret and now, if his life journey came to an end what did it matter what kind of end it would be?
What Joseph didn’t understand and found incredible to say the least, was that authorities would go through such a trouble to get rid off some dying old music teacher "Well if they need to..." he said to himself shrugging his shoulders in confusion.
Joseph waited for two days and on the morning of the third day he died, sitting behind the kitchen table, waiting.
Black car stopped in front of the old apartment building in the west of Berlin. Back door opened and Eugen stepped out. Dressed in a black SS coat, he was holding the folder containing a file on Joseph. Eighty years old music teacher Joseph Bruner was Jewish on his father side and apart from his last stage tuberculosis there was nothing else to add. Certainly there was no real reason for Eugen to come here personally, to send one man would be more than enough. But he liked to brag about his thoroughness "no one is unimportant when it comes to Fuhrer’s orders." He used to say. Of course the fact that he liked to be an agent of terror made it so much easier to uphold the reputation of a bulldog.
His youth, intelligence and ambitiousness had nothing to do with his extremely fast rise in the Gestapo hierarchy. It was pure and simple: Eugen Hitzig was born to be a part of Third Reich. It gave him freedom he always dreamed of. Even as a boy Eugen was unusually cruel, but back then he could never unleash his true nature. Bounded by society rules, he was withering, dreading the thought of becoming a banker like his father. Luckily Adolph Hitler didn’t let this to happen, although in all fairness, Eugen didn't care whom to hunt, Jews or not. He would enjoy hunting Aryans just as much. Truth be told, he would kill his own parents if he wasn’t beaten to it.
Eugen cruelness was beyond reasoning, he didn’t do it for his career, for the money or power. He didn’t even do it to appear fearsome in other’s eyes. He was doing it because it made him happy. Once, when he was arresting his father’s old friend and partner, who happened to have some Jewish relations, he was asked why he was doing what he did, what possible gain was worth more than his soul? He only laughed and asked in return "Why the drunk drinks, what is worth more than his dignity? Why you and my father bankrupted all the middle men turning the hardest blow of depression on them, what was worth more than your honesty? I’ll tell you why, because we can. Because it makes us feel good."
Eugen wasn’t an atheist, quite contrary, he was a strong believer. He believed that God made man a ruler of the Earth and everything on it belonged to him. And if so, a man had a right to do with what was rightfully his anything he desired. Needless to say, the strongest men had right to take and to do what they wanted, because if God did not intend equality between humans and o