The Third Antichrist (20 page)

‘Spare me the violins. We already knew the others had to be dead. The fact that your Gypsy friend dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for you is neither here not there. It doesn’t change anything. It just makes me more angry. More determined to skin Sabir and Calque and that little whore they’re protecting, and peg them out on some convenient hillside.’

‘We hit him. Twice. Once in the arm, I think, and once in the back. But these were long shots. The pistol is not powerful.’

‘Bravo. Great. Perhaps he’ll die of septicaemia before we can pick him up again. That would be convenient. Well done, girls. Well done all around.’

Albescu, Moldova
13 November 2009

34

In the seventeen years since Moldova’s belated introduction of a market economy, Dracul Lupei’s village of Albescu had grown into a thriving town. Albescu’s civic expansion flew in the face of Moldova’s actual situation during much of that period, which resembled more an economic crisis than an economic miracle. There had been rapprochements with, and alienations from, Russia. The temporary
cupon
which had replaced the
ruble
had been replaced, in its turn, by the
leu
. There had been riots. Civil wars. Breakaway republics in the form of the Turkic Gagauz and the Transnistria. Epidemics of organized crime and episodes of human trafficking. Flirtations with capitalism. Flirtations with communism. All fertile ground for the fomentation of a new religious doctrine.

Thanks to Dracul’s foresight in holding his currency reserves outside the country in the form of dollars, euros, pounds, and Swiss francs, however, Albescu, in marked contrast to much of the rest of Moldova, now had factories, garages, and supermarkets. It had its own police force and its own fire brigade. Extraordinarily, it didn’t have menu scams at its restaurants, as happened so often in the capital, when new menus with vastly inflated prices were substituted the moment it came time to pay. And crime rates were non-existent.

A bunch of Siberian gangsters had attempted to move in, back in 1997, and make the town their own, true – but they had mysteriously disappeared. Contrary to normal Moldovan practice, the Albescu police didn’t take bribes – if an individual was unfortunate enough to get himself into trouble, a hefty donation to Dracul Lupei’s Church of the Renascent Christ was usually enough to ensure both his freedom and his ticket to heaven.

The actual name of Dracul Lupei, however, had been consigned to the ashes many years before, and Mihael Catalin, meaning ‘the pure gift from God’, had taken its place. In the past fifteen years, Mihael – who had just celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday – felt that he had taken on many of the attributes of the man he purported to be.

His Church of the Renascent Christ encouraged clean living and humility. It also encouraged chastity for the unmarried. Mihael was considered to be a fine moral exemplar in this regard, as he had never been known to frequent women, and indeed still lived with his sister Antanasia, who, like Mary Magdalene before her, had been redeemed by her saviour from the ways of darkness. Or so it was said.

In this way Dracul/Mihael enjoyed both ends of the pleasure spectrum – the expedient reputation of still being something of a hermit, and the private joys of carnal embrace with his sister Antanasia, who had, over the years, become not only his odalisque, but also his spiritual midwife. His apostle’s apostle.

When Dracul didn’t want to bother himself with extraneous detail, he communicated it through Antanasia. This prevented his people from becoming tired of him. By rationing his public appearances to one Sunday a month, Dracul also ensured that his followers were gagging for him when the great moment came.

To further add to his exclusivity, Dracul had surrounded himself with what he called his ‘Crusaders’. These young men – and they were all men – were tasked with carrying the word of the Risen Christ to outlying towns and villages, both in Moldova and across the border in Romania, Transnistria, and the Ukraine. Cynical souls might have viewed these men as bodyguards, but there were no cynical souls amongst Mihael’s flock. One either totally believed, or one was out. And life inside Albescu was held at such a premium by people to whom $10 could mean the difference between eating and not eating that month, that utter faith was a cheap price to pay for security, protection from crime and harassment, and the guarantee of food in one’s belly.

Dracul’s 25 per cent rule also applied in town. In fact the figure was closer to 50 per cent for those wishing to start a business and benefit from Albescu’s remarkable perquisites. Even Orthodox Christians who did not live in Albescu appreciated the presence of Dracul’s Church of the Renascent Christ close by them, because, when taken concentrically – and with Albescu centre of the circle – mosques and synagogues and revivalist evangelical churches would close down in ever-increasing numbers wherever Dracul’s ‘Crusaders’ concentrated their attention.

No one could actively pin such shutdowns on the CRC, of course. It was just coincidence that rents went up, bureaucracy increased, and schools and places of employment became more discriminating when it came to accepting those from minority religions or minority ethnic groups. The ‘Crusaders’ were very careful not to alienate Orthodox Christians, however, for theirs was the basket from which Mihael Catalin plucked his ripest plums.

Now in the prime of his life, Mihael had come to resemble, to a quite extraordinary degree, the TV Christ of a wildly popular Russian soap opera that had run for a number of years during the 1990s. This soap opera had succeeded where Mihael’s original ministry had failed – in turning Mihael from a local star into a national celebrity.

Thousands of new believers – some from as far away as Siberia and Germany – had flocked to Mihael’s banner when a documentary crew had filmed him over the course of a few weeks one summer for Russian television. The programme had somewhat fortuitously aired back-to-back with the long-running TV drama, thanks to a number of discreet cash transfers to interested parties. And Mihael’s uncanny resemblance to the TV Christ – an allegedly serendipitous coincidence which Dracul had actually worked up over a period of months with Antanasia’s help – was indeed extraordinary. How could a man who looked so like Christ not be Christ?

Add to that the CRC’s convenient advocation of female submission to a patriarchal male blueprint – i.e. man follows God and woman follows man, and man fills woman with his spirit and woman fills man with nature, that sort of thing – and one had an equation that melded particularly well with conventional religious wisdom. The leap from Orthodoxy to Renascent Christianity was not a large one, therefore, and it was money and security that finally swung the vote. A 25 per cent tithe might seem a lot at first glance, but when one was placed in a situation where one could earn 500 per cent more than the average daily wage, feed and house one’s family, and avoid government and police corruption to boot, 25 per cent no longer seemed an unreasonable price to pay.

After all, what happened to the mosques, synagogues, and temples was not so bad – these people had other places to go to, hadn’t they? Other countries that would welcome them? Mihael Catalin was not advocating a pogrom, was he? He was just asking people to stand up and be counted.

Lately, Mihael had come up with a clever new idea for cementing solidarity amongst his disciples – they were all to be tattooed with a three-bar patriarchal cross on their foreheads. At first, this had caused some consternation, especially amongst the women. But Mihael had swiftly won them over.

‘When Armageddon comes, you will need to be at the very epicentre of the spiritual world in order to survive it. Only my followers will be saved. The rest of the world will perish. We therefore need to be instantly recognizable – both to each other and to God. The forehead tattoo is perfect for this. It is a thing of beauty. A worthy sacrifice on the altar of vanity. Women, when your husband looks into your faces when he is making love to you, he will see the diesis that represents Christ – this will sanctify your union and make it holy. Men, when your wives look up to you when you are impregnating them, they will see the slanted crossbeam representing the balance of justice. This will reinforce God’s natural order.’

So the New Messiah proclaimed. And so Dracul’s followers gradually came to believe.

Two Kilometres North of
the Romanian Border
15 November 2009

35

Amoy knew they would be waiting for him. All his life he had believed in fatalism. That events were predetermined, and that prayer and supplication were pointless. He was Roma. A C
ă
ld
ă
rari. Bottom of the human shit-heap. God had made him that way for a purpose, and that purpose was to suffer.

But Amoy had outwitted God. He had made a good life for himself. Married a fine woman. He had six children. And many cousins. Slowly, he had come to realize that being bottom of the shit-heap had its advantages. Nobody paid any attention to you. You weren’t worth robbing. You were invisible to most of the people you encountered in your everyday dealings. This meant that, within reason, you could make your own laws, and live life the way you wanted to live it.

Poverty was relative. You were poor, yes. But you lacked for nothing that counted. Food you could grow or steal. Accommodation you could build or requisition. Borders became fluid – because nobody wanted you, nobody troubled you. You weren’t worth bribing. You were hardly even worth tormenting, as what fun was it to torment a man who already seemed broken? This was your strength. And your curse.

You knew they would be waiting for you a kilometre or two beyond the border. There were no side roads. With your wagon, and your horse, it would be impossible for you to hide. So best to face it out. If it was your moment to die, then so be it. The wounded Gypsy was your brother. He too was situated on the bottom of the shit-heap. You had recognized the despair on his face. You had seen how his enemies had bound his hands behind his back like a farmer would bind a pig he was taking to market.

When the Gypsy asked for your help you were minded to say no. And then a thought had overwhelmed you. A memory from your grandfather’s time. How, during a forced march to a transit camp in Hungary, a German soldier had taken pity on your grandfather and given him a bar of chocolate for his wife and family. The German had been an older man. Not SS. The sort of man who would have managed the local post office in civilian life.

Your grandfather had bartered this chocolate for many cigarettes. Then he had bartered the cigarettes for a knife. With this knife he had killed another of his guards and escaped with his family back to Romania. Fate was a powerful thing. As was destiny. Deeds moved in circles. If the German soldier had not given your grandfather the chocolate, it might have been he who your grandfather had killed. Instead, this soldier had no doubt gone back to his village in Bavaria at the end of the war without ever knowing that another man had died in his place. Maybe he had married and had children? Fathered a dynasty? Managed a whole chain of post offices? And all for a bar of chocolate.

Yes. The car was there. With four people beside it. Two men and two women. As your horse approached them, you had ample time to sum them up.

Firstly, they were not Siberian gangsters. For this you were truly grateful. The Siberians enjoyed killing. Each had his own pick, that had been given him by a mentor. The picks gained power the more they were used. Siberians would have forced the information about the French Gypsy out of him, and then stuck him with their picks just for the hell of it.