January 1st, 1342
Kava my beloved city
How many days have I been swallowed up by the embrace of your lovely shore! I, young Clayton, have always been excessive in amusement, drinking, and sleeping with beauties, but my pure pleasure is that moment when I spend here with no one but that rock, sitting, closing my eyes, and eavesdropping on the voices of the soaring seagull and the cries of the old ships.
The breeze of your air plays with my growing beard, happy despite the poverty, I am filled with tranquility despite the noise, all these merchants who come to you from all over the world come and go without tasting you, only your banks know your taste, O beloved city, only those who sat when the sun cast its dreamy gold on your fields, cast it on the wrinkles of my mother, my mother who always devoted herself like a monk who dedicated himself to the Lord, and whom I always see carrying something, sometimes carrying our clothes heading to the stream or carrying food that she sprinkles tenderly for the chickens that have gathered under her hand as if she were the source of life and as if she were their God, even that fledgling chicken that resembles my virgin beard, she carries it tenderly, and puts it away in warmth, until it regains its vitality.
Kava and your vast ocean? I've always wanted to ride it on one of those tall ships.
I almost swear that ships have eyes to see, ears to hear, and feet hidden beneath the water. I see them listening to me, whispering to me, screaming and waiting for a response, inviting me to climb to the surface, to explore the depths of the unknown. That part inside me that is eroding with longing that kills me and burns my insides. O vast, expansive water, when will I be a captain on your banks, a priest in your sanctuary?
Maybe someday... Patience Clayton, patience.
The third day of January in the year 1346
My dear Monique, I am writing to you now what I could not express. Parting from your land that bears your precious feet tears my heart apart. Without you, I am a wanderer in the corners of the world. The sea almost throws me up, and the sky is about to strike me with lightning as punishment for leaving you. What my cowardice and weakness accept before your eyes, my beloved, the laws of nature do not accept.
Monique, I'll be back for you.
I swear I'll be back.
***
May 10, 1346
It has been more than a month now that I have been a prisoner of this ship, the mermaid whose sweet songs have enchanted me, throwing myself into her arms before she drowns me and devours me like the monster of Poveglia Island.
I am tired of the sea, tired of the food and drink that never change, tired of the constant swaying day and night, tired of the sailors' screams every time a storm blows.
Damn those damned people, with their white-spotted skin and bloody teeth that screamed to testify to the scurvy that did not deter them from making my life a living hell.
They bully me, they play dirty jokes on my mother. I will kill them, I will kill them one by one to avenge myself and my friend Gustave, so that he may rest in peace, Gustave who did not fall into the water and drown by accident as they say; I know they killed him, and I know that they are plotting against me, and perhaps the drowning of my friend Gustave will prevent them; the drowning of a sailor is a very likely accident, but the drowning of two on the same ship will raise suspicions that may lead them to the gallows.
As for those merchants from Italy, they are just watching, the filthy ones amusing themselves with my misery... Damn the damned merchants, damn the sailors, the sea and the ships.
If I ever see you again, Kava, I will swear on my father's grave that I will never leave you.
*********
Mid-February 1347
It has been more than a year since I left the sea, and now I am on the land of Kava.
Let these words of mine be a witness to what happened and what is happening.
All the data around me indicates that we are living a catastrophe from which no one will escape, but if someone is lucky enough to escape the grip of the black darkness, and if those days are not the second coming and the end of the world, then these words of mine will be a faithful witness.
This catastrophe, in which thousands will die, is the worst in human history. I predicted it and told what I saw and narrated what I witnessed, but no one listened. They were listeners but not listeners, spectators but not witnesses.
It all started a few days ago when I had a fight with a merchant from Italy. The scoundrel tried to get close to Monique in a way that didn't please her. And judging by the bruises on his face, it didn't please me either!
A fight like any other, the right was in my grasp, so I insulted him badly, kicked him below the waist, then kicked him in the face until he grabbed my feet begging for mercy, and after I injected my anger with my foot into his guts I left him and the crowd dispersed around us and things returned to normal except for his bruised face and a revenge that was still smoldering and bottled up.
And at that time, when I was returning at night from the beach, he and his friends pounced on me. They beat me one by one, kicking me in the face and stomach until I almost lost consciousness. When I thought they were done, I raised my eyes to see a huge club falling on my head. After that, I disappeared into the darkness.
I fell, then I fell, I fell into a deep abyss inside myself, a black abyss as deep as a millstone thrown into a deserted well without water.
I kept falling for decades until my feet came to rest on that rock, the rock I always loved to sit on the beach.
What is this? I just got killed, what's happening? Am I dead?
I looked around; there was the sea before me, the towering wall of Kava behind me, the ships stationary, the sailors casting their loads upon the shore, the seagulls and their familiar songs.
I felt my face, my body, my feet.
If I am dead, what kind of paradise is this?! Or am I in hell?
If I am alive, where is the wound on my head?
I looked at my face in the water, my green eyes, my blond hair, my thick beard, it was really me, but wait, there was something glowing under the water.
I looked closely.
No, no, it's not under the water, it's a reflection of the sky, it's in the sky, a great, luminous thing that looks like a small sun falling on the distant horizon. I kept watching it in amazement, its light fading little by little as it got closer to the sea until the horizon swallowed it up, swallowed it with a tremor under my feet, a tremor that soon had aftershocks.
The ground shakes beneath my feet.
I looked out at the ocean, and my heart sank in panic.
A huge wall of water rose into the sky and headed towards me, a huge wall thousands of kilometers away and yet it almost blocked out the sun, a wall crowned with a crown of great vapors that rose immediately to turn the world into darkness.
Mom, I have to warn her.
I ran into the city quickly, and there was chaos and panic, as they wondered where the shaking was coming from.
Before everyone points to the sky, to the great wall, and the screaming goes up.
!oh my merciful God
Others had been pointing to another luminous body coming from the sky, and here comes another one from the east. Alas! The balance of the universe has been thrown off.
I screamed in spite of myself.
Everyone is jostling and falling, everyone is rushing inside, slamming the doors and hiding in despair inside their fragile houses as if they would protect them, as if the clover stalk could hold out under the English horseshoe.
From afar, I saw my mother looking at the sky and clasping her hands to her chest, which was rising and falling madly. I ran quickly towards her before I stopped suddenly. Someone pulled her and hugged her tightly, patting her shoulder and burying her head in his chest, his eyes looking everywhere in panic. From the heart of the chaos, he raised his eyes to my face so that we could see each other. It was me.
I mean, it was another Clayton, like I was looking in the mirror.
Our mouths widened, we left the calamity coming from above and remained staring at each other with our mouths wide open, only closed by the terrible shock that resulted from the fireball hitting Kava, then the burning tremor and the flames that crept like a flood to devour everyone and turn them to ashes in an instant.
My hand...my hand doesn't burn like the others, it just fades away, my whole body fades away amidst the flames and the thick dust.
I gradually melt like a piece of ice thrown into a log fire, and then suddenly I am submerged in water. This is before I feel myself being taken from my place, to return again to my bed.
What is this? Was it a dream?
I open my eyes slowly.
A terrible pain pounded in my head, and the smell of blood hit my nose mixed with the smell of the vinegar they poured on my skull.
And when I mumbled, and when I had the strength to speak, I told the doctor what I had seen, and he claimed that I was hallucinating. I told my mother and my friends, but no one believed me, not even my mother, who patted me on the shoulder tenderly, and thick tears escaped from her eyes, and her prayer rose in the night: Oh my poor beloved boy! What happened to the young lute?
Cry out to Christ...pray for a miracle.
Wait, people, he saw me too, he saw me and we shared a sense of amazement together, this was not a phantom or a ghost, it was me in flesh and blood, but my words scattered in the air like their ashes before my eyes.
Instead of listening to my warnings, they were busy spreading news of the impending war. What I learned was that a war had broken out between the merchants of Genoa, Italy, and the people of the city of Kana, so they fled to hide here in Kava. I also learned that the Mongols had come after them to kill them, which forced the people of Kava to close the city walls to protect the merchants who had called for their help, which resulted in our falling under siege.
Damn those Italian bastards! They kill us, then bring their killers to kill us too.
Pain, injustice, indignation, and all the feelings of anger that I could write down overwhelmed me but could not; what I saw was real... the earth that shook, the sun that set, and the millions who evaporated and were killed in a split second.
I couldn't bear the fact that I was crazy, that these were poisons seeping into me through the open window in my head like a wine barrel that spills its contents through a small hole at night and floods the floor in the morning. That's how I felt my soul overflowing, leaking from my skull, and no one stopping it.
I smell the scent of my fleeing ghost above my head and I tell it to come back inside.
A deadly tightness is throbbing in my chest, and an urgent desire to scream, a desire so urgent that I almost smash what's left of my head to make it go away.
I forced myself to lean on a dry branch, following the footsteps of a child who had just learned to walk, and with the lumber of a turtle I reached the crowded street.
Despite the pain crushing my head, outside amidst the hustle and bustle of passersby, horses and carts plying the muddy roads, I only caught the attention of a few eyes that looked at my tied head, then disappeared into the crowd.
I looked up at the sky and shouted:
" Death , death is coming from above . "
Oh my God! Those words were like a general numbing to all the pain in my body.
She screamed again:
" Death , Kava, death comes to you from above, Kava . "
The crowd began to stop, there was a murmur among them, eyes examining me and astonishment on their faces. I shouted again loudly:
" Watch the sky, people of Kava, death comes from the sky, death comes from the sky, people of Kava."
I don't know why I started wailing and then crying, and when I didn't stop screaming, my mother walked through the crowd to try to pull me inside, begging me to be quiet.
I cried out more and more:
- "Have mercy, O God... have mercy on Kava, have mercy on Kava."
My mother's arm tightened around my hand to pull me, we both rushed to cry and I fell into her warm embrace.
Everyone watches in anticipation.
My mother cried as if she was addressing the crowd:
"What has happened to you, my apple of my eye? The moist wood has become manna-smeared and withered. The tall, lively body has become like a dead chick. What misfortune has befallen you, my dear Clayton?"
I turned to face the house, crying like a baby whose umbilical cord had just been cut.
Amidst the murmurs of the crowd, the passersby resumed their stomping, and the horses resumed their galloping indifferently. Then suddenly I heard a crash behind me, a crash that made everyone stop, and a dead silence prevailed throughout the place.
I turned slowly, and the source of the sound was a human corpse lying at my feet.
I looked up at the sky, and there was another body falling from the sky and hitting the top of the roof of a house.
The horses screamed in agitation, and it became difficult to control them.
I looked to examine the body beneath my feet, it was a corpse wrapped from head to toe in tattered cloths and its insides had exploded from the impact of the fall.
We were all pulled out of our freeze by the sound of another body falling on the roof of a house and shattering, then the bodies fell one after the other.
The women screamed and grabbed their crying children, carried them on their chests, and ran in panic. The men, their eyes fixed on me, began to move between the bodies that fell one after the other from the sky, then stared at me in disbelief.
Death from the sky? Does this really happen?
One of them approached me, leaving his chariot with its raging horses out of control, and he was suddenly tilting his head at every fall. He grabbed my shoulder until it hurt me, and he shouted:
- "How did you know? Tell us how you knew?"
I looked at him in pure stupidity and shook my head.
Damn me, I don't even know what's going on! What kind of weird time are we living in?
What kind of sick person is this who throws corpses at us from the sky?
Everyone hid in their homes, and the bodies continued to fall all night. After hours of panic, the rain of death stopped.
Some slowly crept out of their homes, the men cautiously approached the bodies to examine them, all wrapped in bandages and tattered cloths, and the bodies were invaded by foul-smelling boils.
The examination was followed by an argument, and then the argument was followed by a quarrel, which was broken up by the guards.
Shortly afterwards orders were given to bury the bodies outside the city.
Yes, the siege was suddenly lifted, and the Mongol general returned with his army from whence he came without warning, after showering us with dead bodies. As for the accursed merchants, they fled from Kava, the cowards, they did not wait for daylight, and they showed no gratitude.
No one knew why the war ended so suddenly, a mystery that was not revealed to anyone, until boils began to appear on the thighs and under the armpits, no one understood the calamity that had befallen us at first, no one explained what had happened until the people of Kava began to fall one by one until the plague began to reap the lives.
Yes, the corpses that rained down on us were nothing but corpses killed by the plague. We also knew that they polluted the water we drank by throwing corpses into the cisterns. The Mongols killed us in the worst way without the need for war or sword, and without the need to storm the walls. The Mongols won a treacherous war while they slept in their warm tents.
In front of the mirror, I lift my armpit to see boils the size of small eggs that have grown on me. My time has surely come.
My mother was asleep at sunset, but she stayed that way until the next morning, then I knew she wasn't asleep... I buried her alone, there was no need to cry, I would follow her anyway.
And then I learned why there were so many sleeping in the street opposite my window. They were dead, and no one had the courage to give them a decent burial. Everyone who came near a sick or dead person was killed too.
Doctors have become nobody among us. They have hidden in their homes, afraid of the brutality of the angry people. They are now useless.
I'm tired. I'll finish tomorrow.
****
Today is just one of those days, my skin is covered in black, my neck is covered in boils, I heard that someone got better, but my situation is only getting worse.
Perhaps these will be my last pages, do not blame me for my trembling hands or for the blood that stained my pages... I do not know who will read this, the whole world is dying, the news is coming from every direction, Europe is collapsing, the smell of death is emanating from everywhere and there is no escape from this epidemic.
You were right.
I saw what I saw, and I believed what I said.
Clayton wasn't babbling or hallucinating.
The Mongols were struck by the plague, so they dropped death on us from above in revenge.
I can't breathe. I need to rest now.
I will rest.
********