Fragments of Faust

By L. J. Frank

Jean-Louis Vidocq, an architect in search of a 16th century manuscript written by Faust. His obsession uncovers much more. The pursuit of a mysterious German manuscript eventually leads to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. and an enigmatic twist of events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. J. Frank
• Release date: Mar 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301159529

L. J. Frank

L. J. Frank is an author, publisher, consultant, historian, philosopher and artist. His background includes library executive and university lecturer. He has studied and worked in Asia, Middle East and Central America. His webpage at: www.ljfrank.com offers further information.

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FRAGMENTS OF FAUST

by

L. J. Frank

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

L. J. Frank at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 L. J. Frank

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This ebook is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously by the author.

Books written by L. J. Frank can be found through the author’s official website: www.ljfrank.com and through online book retailers.

Among primitive humans that roamed the earth seeking spiritual sustenance, one discovers the etymology of the soul rooted in blood and water.

FRAGMENTS OF FAUST

CHAPTER 1

Jean-Louis Vidocq! the wind whispered in his ears. His heart began to pound. The wind grew stronger and the voice grew louder. Escape! Jean-Louis! I beseech you! While you still have the breath! Hurry! Jean-Louis! And the spray of the sea’s wind, pelted and stung his naked body like salt on a wound. A powerful gust swept across the ledge on which he was standing and nearly propelled him into the churning surf. He stumbled, grabbed on to a small spindling tree growing through a fissure of the ledge. He hung on to one of its branches. Clinging to the scraggy piece of wood he haltingly knelt down next to it as the wind grew stronger.

Behind him in the distance towering evergreens that looked like ships’ masts swayed with the sound of cracking branches. Seething waters crashed against the rocky shore below. The wind swirled around his head. Jean-Louis! Don’t do it! Don’t second-guess yourself! Run! Before it’s too late!

Distant sounds from the woods whistled through the trees and chilled his heart. Seagulls circled above his head and cried out. The wind’s voice in despair anxiously murmured in his ears, I plead with you Jean-Louis! Retreat! Leave this damnable business!

But his mind was drenched and tormented with both fear and courage. His body trembled. And the wind’s voice entreated him, "Jean-Louis! Break away! Can’t you hear? Can’t you see? Can’t you grasp what’s happening?

He stood up and turned away from the white crested waters. He wanted to dash towards the forest. His eyes darted back and forth searching for the nave of the treed sanctuary from which he thought he had journeyed. Where was the path that had led him to the ledge? He wondered how he arrived at this place and at this moment, naked. The pathway was obscured.

The wind swirled and stirred the trees. There appeared what looked like another opening, a passage though not the one he remembered walking. He struggled towards it. But then as he moved toward the opening, an unfamiliar and disquieting rumbling coming from the sea caused him to turn his head and peer back towards the towering waves. His eyes widened. An apparition in the form of a cathedral began rising from the foaming surf near the shore’s edge.

A voice emanated from the wind. No! Turn away! Don’t go there, Jean-Louis! You haven’t the time to waste! Flee! Spare yourself! In His Name! Jean-Louis! Please, I beg you….

Whose voice was it? Was it his dead wife? His mistress? Jean-Louis Vidocq shook. His legs felt paralyzed. He tried to move. As he stepped in the direction of the passage his foot slipped against a rock. He tumbled and rolled forward on the ledge. His body ached. His mind was bruised. He slowly picked himself up. His legs and feet were bleeding. He couldn’t go any farther. He looked again.

The apparition and emerging sounds beckoned him like some ancient Siren from the Aegean Sea. Sweat mixed with the saltiness of the sea spray invaded the pores of his skin. He shivered but his flesh embraced a burning sensation like raw garlic on an open sore.

Startled, he heard a cracking sound. He felt a biting pain in his side. His hand reached up to touch a puncture. He gazed downward in disbelief. His hand was covered in blood. He fell down on the sandy breasts of the ledge. He tried to crawl towards the forest opening. His bloodied fingers digging in, he inched forward.

A shadow appeared, he looked up and faintly recognized someone in the distance. But then as quickly as it appeared, the shadow vanished. Perhaps it was just a tree. Tears flooded his eyes. He rolled over on his back. He lay there with the sound of the surf receding in his brain. He sensed someone was standing above and next to him. His chest expanded. He opened his mouth to suck in the wind and speak. Instead, he gasped. He couldn’t breathe.

He suddenly felt a loosely woven cotton-like cloth being lowered, covering his face. He was slowly being suffocated. He needed air. He started to cry out. But his voice failed him. His chest heaved in and out. His mouth and lips writhed in agony. He tried to close his eyelids. But his eyes were already shut.

CHAPTER 2

A sheet slid off Vidocq’s face. He opened his eyes and reached for his side. No blood. It was just a nightmare. His eyes focused on a ceiling fan spinning like a silent whirling propeller hovering above him. The room felt like it was moving. He wanted to grab hold of something. It felt like his vertigo was beginning to engulf his mind. He shook his head as if to cast off the unsteadiness and his nostrils flared as if to breathe in more air to clear his mind. His skin was clammy. The sheets were damp. The voices in the wind faded. The whisper of his name haunted him. Whose voice was it? His body shivered. The voice was vaguely recognizable. There was something about it - like a feint echo from the past in some remote alcove of his brain. The nightmare felt real while lying in his bed, at least in that moment. He felt his skin crawl as the down draft of the propeller blew against the sweat dripping from his body.

He thought of his wife. Was it her voice that haunted his mind? She had died so suddenly. They had been married but one fleeting year. He had met her at an American Institute of Architects (AIA) conference six months previous to the day they were legally partnered before a justice of peace. It was unusual for both of them to even consider marriage as neither wanted children but just a partnership. She was an interior designer whose smile was natural and easy. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She seduced his mind after the first conversation. And he wondered at first if it was one-sided.

Are you insecure? she asked him one evening while sipping some wine.

I don’t think so, but.... Vidocq had replied.

But what?

I don’t know. Just a feeling.

She smiled at the time and tried to reassure him that she was real, and the moment was more than just the minute at hand. Her warmth and compassion surprised him even in the darkest of circumstances. Nothing seemed to shake her. She was unflappable, which was remarkable given the sense of entitlement of her clients. Her resilience was evident especially when a project fell through or a friend betrayed Vidocq’s confidence. And just as quickly as she entered his life, she departed.

She had collapsed in his arms after they returned home from a dinner in which the senator from Virginia, J. O. Cardinal was a guest speaker. The emergency room doctor told Vidocq she had suffered from a possible aneurism, but Vidocq asked for an autopsy even though he hated the very thought of it. It seemed so profane.

Vidocq couldn’t believe what had happened. His wife had a complete physical just four days prior to her death. Something was wrong. He tried to recall every detail when he and his wife exited the building where Senator Cardinal was giving his speech. And then he remembered. A tall young man that looked like an acolyte of sorts dressed in a black tuxedo brushed up against her and she reached for her bare arm. He remembered looking at her and her eyes began to water as if her body knew. What had happened at that moment?

Later he would leave the hospital in disbelief with his mind a blur. It happened so abruptly. Catastrophic events once started seeming to increase speed with each passing moment. But then life and death are unforgiving and the what if’s can be haunting. Perhaps it was her voice that he heard in his dreams warning him away from the cathedral-like apparition. His body shivered. Vidocq recalled that after the autopsy, the coroner’s report listed the cause of death as sudden heart failure, but also indicated a minor but rather unusual blotch or marking on her left arm. Then something strange happened. The coroner did not have an answer as to what it was or what it meant? There was nothing definitive. A second examination proved empty of any explanation. There was no further investigation. Jesus Christ, he had whispered to himself, swearing in frustration.

Jean-Louis Vidocq was an existentialist and ultimately he felt there was no acceptable reason for his wife’s death, except that medical science is imperfect at best. He spoke with an attorney and friend but was told there was not much that could be done. His wife’s body was cremated and hers ashes spread near a mountain stream. The ceremony was private with just a few friends and her only sibling, a sister from Philadelphia. Her parents had already passed away years earlier.

Vidocq continued to lie on his bed. Who was the shadowy figure at the forest’s edge? His thoughts wandered again. For some unknown reason he then thought of his half-brother. The last time they said a word to each other was when they were both in college. Over twenty years had slipped by since that meeting. He knew little about his brother’s whereabouts. What had become of him? Was he even still alive?

He tightened his gut and stretched out his body trying to relieve the tension he felt, followed by a deep sigh. He lay there in a partial dream-like state. Why do things or people enter our mind at any given moment? What was the juxtaposition of the moment that caused a sound, a word, a voice or a face to be recalled? What is it that is so transitional about the hours of the early morning? What was he afraid of? Death? Life? His body ached.

His eyes looked back up at the ceiling fan. Where was his brother now? In the memory folds of his brain, he recalled driving to Chicago to meet him. They had agreed to meet on the campus of Seabury Western where his brother was studying to become an Episcopal priest. They went out for a couple beers at a local bar. Though they were never close, they were still brothers. Their emotional connection was through their mother. His older brother Richard was more ideological than he and given more to seeking affirmation through the lens of black and white.

I prefer my dogma to be contrasting, like a black and white photograph. Richard once said.

What do you mean? Vidocq had asked.

It means for me the black and white photograph provides greater clarity in depicting differences in character of an object or person. I need to be able to wrap my mind around things. But I might be wrong.

Vidocq told him he understood. But they differed in other ways. Their mother’s genes were the common threads in a pattern. Their physical features contrasted. Richard looked more Scandinavian with his blond hair and blue eyes then Vidocq with his darker hair and complexion that seemed more Mediterranean. And their personalities suggested a more provocative chasm. Yet the struggle of their journeys, were equally textured with doubts and insights. He remembered his brother groping with his beliefs at times like a blind man, while he was exploring his existentialism like a man crossing a desert alone.

Vidocq shook his head again as if to create greater clarity of thought. He struggled to get out of bed. His legs felt heavy. The stress of the dream had caused him to tighten his muscles. His calves ached from the tension. Standing up he turned to look at the bed. The odor from his sweat rose from the damp sheets. The covers were twisted and crumbled. The bed was otherwise empty. His partner was missing. Where was she? Did his nightmare drive her away? Perhaps she was somewhere in another part of the house. He showered quickly, put a robe on and walked slowly into the living room.

As he walked into the room, the morning light reflected on his face. Upon first glance Jean-Louis Vidocq appeared to be somewhat of an ordinary man. He was ordinary if one were to look at him from the skin’s surface. The studied gaze of his facial expressions perhaps confessed a different story. It may have been the distant look in his deep-set eyes and half-smile that seemed to suggest a past sadness in life. He thought he had gotten over his melancholia. Now with the woman that was sharing his home, his mind was embarked on a fresh journey. Fuck melancholia! He thought of the woman again. Her brushed-back brown hair, olive complexion and the thick lips contrasted with her oval face and wiry build.

Vidocq himself was not a man that looked like he was from any particular time period. His countenance depended on his mood. His smile could transform his face and appearance, but still he didn’t fit in, at least not in this place and not at this time. But then, after the death of his wife, fitting in seemed not as important as he gradually distanced himself from others – until this new woman entered his life.

Vidocq was an architect by profession and distained judgment and labels associated with that role like the manufacturer’s tag on the inside of suit. A profession or job is not the sum total of a person’s life. It’s a building block in life not the definition of who he was or hoped to be. And his private activities from an exterior view appeared normal, except for his insatiable curiosity. And that curiosity is what kept him opening the door to peer outside and beyond the threshold.

During those moments of doubt and uncertainty, his curiosity about the next moment seemed to beckon him to look and experience the uncertainty. He was wary, unsettled and always in movement. Walking helped. He would pace back and forth whether in his office or at home. He knew there might be a day when he would no longer be curious. He dreaded that moment in time. For the lack of curiosity was not a matter of being in the Zen moment of some lotus position. It was the internal wiring of melancholy that he struggled with throughout his life. Walking and keeping his mind active was preferable to drugs.

Vidocq though not ordinarily given to obsessive-compulsive behavior, found that he was caught in a web of curiosity and doubt and his study of the historical Faust offered respite. But even that study was not beguiling enough.

Though his pursuit of the life of the historical Doctor Johann Faust offered Vidocq a clue, perhaps to his own identity. But then what is identity? Is it oneness? Looking in the mirror he could say, yes that’s me. But what does that mean? The reality of the fixation on Faust centered on the curiosity of what he might not know personally just as a discovery in who he might be himself. Vidocq knew there was no such thing as secret knowledge. That was all bull shit. Rather, the secret quality of knowledge is that moment when there is a personal revelation that something is true or false for oneself. That is one’s identity, Vidocq reasoned. Sacred knowledge like sacred texts was and is an invention of man seeking a cause greater than his own. Words are inventions and creations of the human mind just as thoughts. And thoughts are based on what?

Vidocq spent endless hours searching the caverns of knowledge tucked away on shelves, trying to find one thread of information that might unlock the door to the mind of the mysterious Doctor Faust and the information he may have accessed that might no longer be available in written form. The desire for that knowledge made him all the more curious. He had read somewhere that Faust may have had access to some ancient writings. What had Faust come across in the tombs of the library at the University of Heidelberg?

Who was this Faust – beyond the literary works written about him? Did he resemble Marlowe, or Goethe’s characters offering his soul to Lucifer? Was he a mere peripatetic astrologer, pagan and libidinous scoundrel in league with some imagined Mephistopheles? Or were these mere epithets to masquerade underlying medieval fears that also included beguiling witches, forest spirits and phantoms, along with a myriad of other creatures of superstition?

Indeed, a necromancer’s manual had been written in Latin during the Fifteenth Century describing Forbidden Rites and the aura surrounding magic and the magician. Yet, was there something more provocative hidden in this medieval humanist’s mind and heart? What was that which was hidden? Why would the theologically provocative Martin Luther with so much on his plate even spend a moment of his time contemplating the meanderings of Doctor Johann Faust? What was Phillips Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague afraid of? What did these brilliant reformers fear most of all? What plunged their soul into despair? Fear of God, or was it fear of man, or both? What struck the core of their being? Luther was a man of his times caught between good and evil and Faust to him represented evil, but was there something else?

Vidocq dug deeper into academic, private and several major urban libraries – wherever he could gain access to a piece of rare historical information. The more he searched – the greater his appetite grew. It became a quest. He had succumbed to a lust.

Vidocq’s philosophy was life appears to straddle the existing moment. What was there ultimately to believe in other than oneself? For Vidocq, human choices were more the result of the brain’s writing then his or her free will. And, divine formulas helped justify the pain and contentious nature of existence. Dogma and its rituals allowed and justified order and a sense of control over one’s perceived destiny. And once the mind accepts and is captive to an idea it’s an arduous task to loosen it from the underpinnings that created it.

Yet, Vidocq speculated that Doctor Faust as a humanist and scholar at the University of Heidelberg may have uncovered something among the manuscripts and books, information that had been accumulated about ancient religions and the nature of God. Again, what was it? What was revealed to Faust and based on what? Vidocq speculated that the hidden was not so hidden nor were there ever any secrets to reveal, except those hidden along the passageways of the human mind. Perhaps the value of the pursuit lay within the pursuit itself.

With the palm of his hand on the Bible it took little effort for a bishop and a priest in pre-reformation days to the of list books that were forbidden to be read by the general population. To read such books might lead to heresy. That admonition became imbedded in the spirit of all believers. Yet that same fear fed into the curiosity of those who quietly questioned lest they be burned at the stake. The question in Vidocq’s mind was, did Faust have access to the lists of books that the church forbade and what was the depth of his research?

As Vidocq scanned the Internet to see who might own an unusual copy that might have a footnote or anecdote about the historical Faust, he spent countless evenings finding morsels and bits of misleading information. Most works on Doctor Faust were devised within a literary context. He found himself inevitably searching libraries and bookstores around the globe, combing their shelves whenever he visited large cities perchance he would come across a book that might suggest a different slant or deviation or alternate path from previously encountered information and that in turn would rouse him to look at far off places.

The pursuit took him to places he normally didn’t travel. He delved into the shelves of books in a myriad of locations from the Selexyz Bookstore in Maastricht, Holland, the Lello Bookstore in Porto, Portugal, the Shakespeare & Co. Antiquarian Books and the Sorbonne Library in Paris, Bad Schussenried Bibliothekssaal in Baden-Württemberg and Heidelberg’s University Library both in Germany, and Waterstone’s Piccadilly and Blackwell’s in London, along with the Strand Bookstore in New York City.

In all of Vidocq’s searching, there seemed to be only one strange incident. During a brief visit to the Strand Bookstore, a man browsing the shelves of books nearby approached him after overhearing a conversation about his pursuit of the historical Doctor Faust with a store clerk. The man asked, What are you doing poking around at Faust?

Vidocq had looked at the man rather astonished at the question