An Improbable Life Book I: The Prologue, Dawn, First Travels

By Frasar

Book 1 of the An Improbable Life series starts from the end, namely the last few episodes told by Francis, the protagonist, which cover the period of time between March 2009 and November 2010. This constitutes the prologue for the whole series. You will likely come to understand the reason for choosing this period of time as you carefully read the rest of the book. However, I feel it might be best for me to explain it before you even start reading what I feel will be, though I could be wrong, the end of a long, long story, spanning seventy years of a truly extraordinary life.

Francis is not the product of a writers vivid imagination. He really existed and still lives and is engaged in further adventures. Aside from the names of a few characters, which have been changed for the sake of privacy, everything else relates to real people and episodes that actually took place in the mentioned dates. Many readers in different countries across the world will recognise themselves in the characters described in the five books of the An Improbable Life series. Franciss diary was organised into ten chapters, each of them covering seven years of his life. It was given to me when he and his wife, Georgina, returned to California in December 2010. Before they left, Francis came to see me with the ten volumes of his diary and asked me to write a book that would take freely from his memories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504989237

Frasar

If the life of Francis, the hero of the “Improbable Life” saga would be a river it would be bigger than Nile, more thrilling than the Amazon, more fascinating than the Danube, more legendary than the Mississippi and it would run across all continents. After his fascinating adventures in the remote corners of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America and Saudi Arabia described in the previous books, Book IV will carry the Reader into a dangerous encounter with a serial killer in Bangkok, thrilling discoveries and life at a Taoist monastery on a Sea of China’ island, treasure hunting in the Philippines and a personal, adventurous, encounter with Aung San Suu Kyi the secluded leader of Myanmar (Burma). The action will then move to the remote Pacific Islands of Hawaii, Tahiti and Easter Island, with the discovery of a hidden volcanic cave hiding a stunning, and terrifying, surprise. The narration will continue into the most remote of the Africa continent, from Cape Verde to Mozambique, Nigeria to Angola, Togo to South Africa where we will encounter Nelson Mandela just out of his Robben island’ prison, and share with Francis, among other stories, the excitement of being marooned in an island of the Indian Ocean and the narrow escape from guerrilla fighters in Angola. And finally, the breakthrough!, the discovery of the meaning of life, and what Francis perhaps might encounter next. In another world, maybe in another universe.

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© 2016 FRASAR. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

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Published by AuthorHouse 02/02/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8924-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8925-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8923-7 (e)

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Front Cover Illustration by Paolo Puggioni - www.paolopuggioni.com.

Contents

Foreword

The Prologue

Mark, The Ancient

The Little Red Book

The Kidron Valley - March 15, 2009

Curfew

Teutonic Forest

The Roar – March 19, 2009

The Roads Of The Mind

The Dream - Peru 1982

Olney (Maryland) - November 1996

Olney (Maryland) - November 2003

New York – 2010

The Awakening

The Story Continues

Chapter I Dawn

The Beginning Of Knowledge

Fight For Life - September 1940

The War At Home - 1943

Francis’ Small World - August 1943

The Military Dog - October 1943

The Bunker - 5Th May 1944

Night Of Terror

Landmines - June 1944

The Streamers - July 1944

The Egg - August 1944

The Collapse - December 1944

First Trip After The War - March 1945

The Lightning - August 1945

The Secret Garden - September 1945

Moving To Nowhere - 1948

Blood!!! - October 1948

The Rock And The Fortress (Part I) — March 1949

The Whirlpool - July 1949

The Rock And The Fortress (Part Ii) - July 1949

Ufos And Other Stories - 13Th March, 1950

The Special Year - September 1950

The Ghost Mountain - July 1951

The Lily And The Bat - Years 1951-1952

Chapter 2 The First Travels

The Gem In The Basket - July 1957

The Expo - September 1958

The Misunderstanding

Arrival In The Champagne

The Two French Sisters

A Dive Into The Marne

In Paris With Anya

The Night Continues

Little Romances - November 1958

Gilda

Going Underground - February 1959

Creta Rossa - April 1959

The Green Valley – (Spain) July 1959

Return From Salardu - August 1959

Absolute Black - August 1959

Diana - August 1960

The Carla Or Adriana Dilemma - January 1961

The Ventrosa Tragedy - 15 January 1961

The Girl On The Balcony - October 1961

The Viper - July 1961

The Ambush - August 1961

The Bikini

The Currents Of Dynos

The Red And The Green

Stromboli

The Crater Of Fear

The Lighthouse

The Strange People Of Stromboli

The Last Abyss - August 1961

The Madman - July 1962

No Longer Alone

The Beginning Of The Future

This book is dedicated to my two readers,

one of whom is me

while the other could be you,

the best person of all

the one who will understand

and continue in my footsteps

without listening to anyone but himself

and who will discover how big the world is

for who knows how to look within

and without himself.

FOREWORD

Book I of the An Improbable Life series starts from the end, namely the last few episodes told by Francis, the protagonist, in his diary in the period of time between March 2009 and November 2010 and that constitutes the Prologue for the whole series. You will likely come to understand the reason for choosing this period of time as you read the pages that follow. However, I feel it might be best for me to explain it before you even start reading what I feel will be the end of a long, long story, spanning seventy years of a truly extraordinary life.

Francis¹ is not the product of a writer’s vivid imagination. He is a real person who really existed and is still engaged in further adventures. Asides from the names of a few characters, which have been changed for the sake of privacy, everything else relates to real people and episodes that actually took place in the mentioned dates. Many readers in different countries across the world will recognise themselves in the characters described in the books of the An Improbable Life series². Francis’ diary was organised into ten chapters, each of them covering seven years of his life. It was given to me when he and his wife Georgina returned to California in December 2010. Before they left, Francis came to see me with the ten volumes of his diary and asked me to write a book that would take freely from his memories.

Francis feared that all his experiences, including the dramatic ones that took place at the dawning of his life, as well as the memories of his extraordinary adventures (thrilling, comic, sad, peculiar or even absurd), which took place in every continent, would be lost forever. It was those very events, which took place in the brief period of time described in the Prologue before and after his 70th birthday, that showed Francis how his whole life, along with the episodes that defined it, could dissolve into nothing. Perhaps into the dirt of a tomb in the Valley of the Apocalypse, or between the jaws of a puma on a Californian hill.

Other people have certainly gone through similar, even more dramatic experiences than those Francis had. These people, like Francis, were not able to resist the temptation of opening those narrow closed doors, concealed in the shadows that most of us try to avoid. Francis knew that new, diverse and unexpected worlds lay beyond those unfamiliar doors, and that they would only become visible for those who don’t fear to venture, alone, where few others wish to go. Unlike others, however, Francis had decided to open those dark doors in every part of the world, thus creating for himself an improbable life, incomparable to any other.

And yet, was Francis really alone in all his adventures? In his diary, the protagonist always asserted he felt an invisible friend close to him, who invariably protected him and helped him get out of the most desperate situations. If you read even a few of his adventures you may well reach the same conclusion. Not all the episodes described in Francis’ diary are contained within the books of An Improbable Life. These are just fragments of his life, spent in the various continents where he lived and worked. From the old Europe to Oceania, from South America to the Middle East, from Asia and Pacific islands to the African continent, from the Caribbean to Easter island. The diary included a series of extraordinary and improbable episodes, which took place in every corner of the world.

The hardest decision for me, as a writer, was how to pinpoint the place in time where I would start telling the story of Francis’ life. So, I decided to start with a Prologue that would include the last episodes described in his diary, between March 2009 and November 2010. The action starts therefore with an extraordinary event that took place in the house of Mark the Evangelist, in the Armenian quarter of old Jerusalem. It then continues along the narrow borders of a valley just outside the ancient walls of the city that represent the centre of the world, where everything began and everything will end.

I am aware that some readers may doubt the veracity of the episodes told within. That is why I chose An Improbable Life as the overall title for the series, despite all events narrated in it being real and documented. I also included some deliberately anonymous photos in the text. Most of the photos Francis took are still stored in a New Jersey basement, waiting to be brought back to light upon his granting permission. The photos I have included in the text are there to help readers visualise the locations where the events took place, or to help confirm their authenticity. This would not undermine the readers’ ability to use their own imagination.

I had no need for them. As I immersed myself in Francis’ diary in its entirety, I felt the Arabian sun on the back of my neck, the salt of the Caribbean sea on my skin, the New Mexico wind in my hair and even the horror from the encounter with one of North America’s most ruthless criminals, as though I were the protagonist of his tales and I were reliving his every adventure in his stead. I do, however, need to add one more note to this Foreword.

Francis told me there could be a further chapter to his already improbable life, but that he would only know after the 13th of November 2017. His choosing such an exact date didn’t surprise me in the least. In fact, you can also discover why, if you read the Prologue until the end.

THE PROLOGUE

Mark, the ancient

It was the 8th of March of the year 2009 and Francis was feeling restless. He hadn’t slept much that night, perhaps because the light of the moon filtering in through his window had kept him awake and thoughtful. He knew that the three weeks of March that preceded the beginning of spring would always be a period of closure for him. What he didn’t know yet was that he would never forget those weeks. At the first light of dawn, he was still lying in bed while he thought back to similar periods in previous years of his life. It was never a particularly positive astrological time for him, even though it was invariably followed by a period of strong rebirth and euphoria at the beginning of spring. All activities he was involved in seemed to come to a sudden end, while forgotten episodes he thought relegated to the past would resurface to torment him.

That year was no different: once again, the end of the astrological year was coinciding with the conclusion of a cycle of assignments in Africa and the Middle East, which Francis had undertaken for the World Bank. His work concerned projects located in the troubled West Bank area, although he would then spend his weekends in Jerusalem, a city that held a special attraction for him. Old Jerusalem, enclosed by ancient walls that were destroyed countless times but always rebuilt, was a unique city, with a far more Arabic look than one would generally assume, its crowded alleyways filled with strong scents and merchandise of all sorts. The old city, though no larger than one square kilometre, was more than anything else a divided city: there were Islamic, Hebrew, Christian and even Armenian Coptic quarters. Francis had tried to visit them all, going in and out of buildings with a history dating back to before the birth of Christ. Old Jerusalem was a place like no other. It was a place where you felt immersed in an extraordinary atmosphere, beyond time.

During a previous trip in March 2000, which coincided with Pope Wojtyla’s visit to the city, Francis had had some unforgettable experiences that he had tried to describe in his diary, which he had begun to write a few years before. Jerusalem wasn’t just any city to him, but a place where the edges of reality became blurred and you could get lost in history. That day, during a late sunny morning, Francis was within the old city walls near the Tower of David, built under King Herod in 34 BC, in the north-western part of the city. That’s when he saw a small sign directing towards the House of Mark the Evangelist. This sparked his interest because he considered himself a fan of Mark, having reconstructed his history in detail in the 1980s, during a mystic period of his in Abha, a town situated in the Assir mountains of Saudi Arabia.³

Mark was the young man who would hang around his mother Mary’s house in Jerusalem, and open the door for the apostles coming in one by one or in little groups uncertain of what it was supposed to happen there in only a few hours. Mark would then close the door quickly behind him to avoid unfriendly eyes seeing the assembly of people who was gathering in the largest room of the house. That day and location became famous later when one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the world took place there: the descent of the Holy Spirit above the heads of each of those present in the form of tongues of fire. That day the gathered apostles received the gift of speaking and understanding any language.

Everyone appreciated young Mark, especially Paul of Tarsus and his cousin Barnabas, who often invited him to accompany them on their apostolic travels to the Middle East. In their company Mark visited a large number of locations all around the Mediterranean sea to reach finally Rome and later Aquileia, at the time a city of great strategic importance for Northern Italy. Mark’s life was eventful and intellectually very active although destined, like those of the other missionaries, to end in tragedy a few years later in Alexandria, in Egypt. Mark’s story, however, did not end there. Eight centuries later two Venetian merchants stole his remains and hid them inside a vegetable basket covered by pork meat to discourage Islamic people from searching for them. Then, they went back to Venice, where his remains were buried under the great Saint Mark’s Basilica.

Francis had all of this in mind when he finally arrived in front of Mark’s mother’s house in the Armenian quarter. From the outside, the house looked like a small church, protected by an iron gate. The front door had a frosted glass panel through which Francis could make out some lights and the shadows of various people moving around the little church. Someone inside had noticed his curiosity, as the glass door suddenly opened and a little nun dressed in dark cloth appeared on the threshold, inviting him in with an impatient gesture and motioning for him to take a seat with the others inside. The nun closed the door behind her and addressed the other pilgrims in an incomprehensible foreign language, most likely Armenian. Francis couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, until she began speaking in perfect English. What she said at that point made a lasting impression on his mind.

She talked about the early history of the church, and the many events that had taken place there. She then spoke of a painting of Mary, traditionally attributed to Luke the Evangelist and of its many miracles. Finally she described Mark’s house, or rather his mother Mary’s, which was a few meters under the church, like other original Jerusalem buildings. The nun ended saying that she would now show them the largest room of the ancient house, down an internal stone staircase. Francis followed the group to the top of the stairs, which descended by a few metres into a large rectangular room. As they went down the stairs, the nun explained how the current room was smaller than the original, due to a wall that had been built in more recent times to support the vault of the house. She added that it was in that very room that the apostles had gathered together on the day of the Pentecost. When they arrived below, the group was facing a large dim room, lit only by a few lights on the walls. The nun stopped talking and the group fell into a deep and respectful silence.

Francis had moved to the front of the group when something indescribable happened, which at first he couldn’t understand. It was as though the room had preserved even the air of a distant age, and he had thus entered the past. The air he was breathing was not the stale mouldy air of an ancient underground environment: Francis was breathing fresh, natural air, as though a door to the outside had opened behind him. The wall dividing the room had disappeared and the room had regained its original size. There were many lit torches on the walls and at one end there was a long table with some people sitting around it. He was about to ask himself how this could be possible, when his senses became filled with images, sounds and colours. Ahead of him and to his side, there were people moving about, wearing ancient tunics and colourful mantels, which looked at once solemn and familiar to him. It was as though the room had suddenly come alive and he was in it as a partaker in an event of unspeakable majesty. Past, present and future fused together and Francis had become one with the entire universe.

Time had stopped and no longer had any meaning. Francis had entered a dimension where a millennium or an instant were the same thing. He was here now, with the Armenian pilgrims, but he was also there then, with the people who were filling the room. A few of them looked at him as though they knew him and gestured for him to join them. That had to be a day of celebration, but also a day where all the attendees seemed to be expecting something to happen. It was something big, something immense, something to be remembered forever. A white and powerful light suddenly lit up the room, like lightning or a heatless sun. Francis had to shield his eyes with his hands from the brilliance. A great din ensued, a cacophony of voices and accents, as though all those present had suddenly started to speak at same time in ancient and unknown languages.

Overwhelmed by the immensity of the event, he decided to keep his eyes shut and find solace in that temporary darkness. Francis could not remember how long he stayed in that state of trance, although he knew he didn’t want to come out of it. He did remain in it until the clamour of voices suddenly stopped, and he was surrounded by the utmost silence. Then he heard the nun’s abrupt voice again. He opened his eyes and found he was in the middle of the pilgrim group and the nun was inviting them to go back up the stairs. However, getting out of there was exactly what Francis wanted to avoid. He would have wanted to stay longer in that room, perhaps alone and free to act. He would have liked to see what was behind the wall that was once again dividing the room and return to that world of sounds, colours and life in which he had just been immersed. He was indeed the only one left behind in the dim room, but not for long. The nun noticed his absence and immediately reappeared at his side, imperiously gesturing to follow the Armenian pilgrims who were climbing the stairs again.

Back upstairs, the group of visitors said farewell to the nun and went out of the church. All except for Francis, who had many questions to ask. When he saw her alone, he approached the nun to tell her about the great experience he had had in the room below, but apparently she no longer could speak any English. She was either pretending not to understand him or perhaps she had decided that it was already late and wanted to lock up the church. Francis then decided to keep the memory of the extraordinary event to himself, but he wanted to at least thank her for speaking English to him, adding that he didn’t expect it at all. The nun looked at him