The Faithlessness

By Ivan Ivackovic

Is renunciation of God and turning to the Devil the deepest degree of man’s desperation or the highest point of his strength? The Faithlessness shows the demonic power which possesses people and leads them to see the way to happiness and freedom in crime and not in doing good. This unusual novel is full of philosophical ideas, irony and spiritual duels. Rich in thoughts and stratified in messages, it ends with a bravura in which the heroes for the first time get their names and the events get precise geographical and temporal coordinates.

 

This book is a little homage to Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky, Milton, Conrad, Nietzsche, and, in a particularly interesting way, to Goethe. There are also many dedications to other authors.

 

The Faithlessness is a condensed prose piece of work in which fiction and reality are interwoven, a story that provokes contemplation and lures of repeated reading and of constant discovery of numerous, at first sight, hidden flows.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398420229

Ivan Ivackovic

Ivan Ivackovic was born in 1964. In addition to The Faithlessness, he has published six non-fiction books and a collection of poems.

Book preview

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Why are you keeping me here? Who are you, my executioner or a helper? Do you intend to cure me or to kill me? I have done nothing to be guilty of. I have never harmed anybody. Is this a gaol? I do not deserve to be imprisoned. I am a respectable man. A poet, if you will. I do not need any cure, I am healthy. I got fever, but I have recovered and feel well. The disease for me is the past, and these mild attacks, short deliriums, and even the blood that I have been coughing up during the last few days, are only a belated thunder after a storm.

It is important that I should remember that evening? It was so long ago. But I am going to tell you. Yes, in details; the memories are still alive.

It was a warmish, quiet early evening. During the previous days, humid leaves, whirled from the ground, dirt and dust, were sticking to people and houses. Parts of the town looked as if an eruption of volcano had befallen them. The lava had become grey, dry and hard. As if the petrified mud had stiffed the living beings and their homes. A lot of time has passed since it happened to us, but such a fate will certainly happen again to a town by a mountain that spews out lava and hot stones.

I have strayed a bit in my thoughts, forgive me. Where did I stop? Yes, I know. I waited for the wind to calm down, and towards the end of the day, I went out. I started for the graveyard. I needed silence. Nobody disturbs it there. I hate noise, and the definitiveness of the graveyard is the best shelter from it.

I went to my mother’s grave. I kneeled and kissed my palm, and then placed it on the tombstone. Every time I try to force myself to kiss the stone, as my father does, but I never manage. I feel afraid of various infections. It is understandable, isn’t it? The times are awful, illnesses are raging with all their might, and I am in a greater danger than lots of others. I get ill easily. And not to lie to you, I blame my mother for it. She was of a weak body and an oversensitive soul. She often was in bed, wrapped into poultices. My father, strangely, was never ill.

I see that many people experience what happens to me: they become victims of the weaker parent. That may be the way towards the progress of the mankind. Inheriting an illness instead of health, we learn how to overcome them. The more diseases we obtain as the heritage, the more we develop the skills and drugs by means of which we conquer them. We would need neither drugs nor doctors. It is God’s will that we still need them, you say? You believe in God? I don’t. You have trembled all over, up to your nails. You are afraid you will be punished because your ears have heard the unchristian words? Don’t you have more serious sins that disturb you? You are here to ask? All of a sudden you are brave and bold. And if I say that God does not exist, you will be shaking again.

My words are not frightening you, they are offending you? Now you are lying as a dog; they are frightening you to death. But so that you are not afraid or feel offended, we can agree that God still exists, even if he exists only as long as our talk lasts. And, here, I believe that God, who, for your sake, exists at this moment, has completely left to people the care for their health. Perhaps he finds it to be a too great effort to take care of them. It may also be that he simply doesn’t care. He certainly did not withdraw in order to teach us something.

The development of our ability to defend ourselves form illnesses is only a consequence of God’s laziness or lack of interest. That is why you have something to be occupied with. For, it seems that you are still a sort of a doctor. You are the fruit of God’s ill humour. But even God is nothing better if he helps you with his laziness. Or, perhaps you have a deal with him. Yes, that’s it. You need God. You need him because he and you, the ointmenters, hatched a plot against people. I know it best. You are keeping me here by force. But if I tell you what you are interested in, perhaps you will let me go. That is probably why I admitted that I blame my mother for my poor health. Nobody knows that except you. I have disclosed a little secret, I am going to disclose some others, the greater ones, and you will perhaps make me free. And even if you don’t do that, you should know that I am already free inside.

You want me to go on about that evening? Alright. When I left the graveyard for home, and it’s a very short way, I met a beggar. Father taught me that one should give alms. I kept to that lesson whenever I could. That is why I also then put a coin in his hand. The beggar gave me a smile, though he knew that the value was negligible.

I went on and before long I got to a hovel, in front of which I would always stop. I could have also walked from the graveyard along another side, the one along which I came. But sometimes I feel that I must stand in front of that house for some time. While the night was falling, I felt such a need, painful and irresistible.

The house was so ruined that it seemed it would collapse any moment. It twisted as if it had been given a strong stroke into its stomach. It twisted and shrank. I recalled how, long ago, dogs gathered around it, which frightened the passers-by. I remember the barking and the muzzle with sharp teeth of a dog, which would, all of a sudden, rush in front of the house. I remember the teeth that would unexpectedly come out close by the legs of a man walking by. The people would be numb with fear, jump aside and hurry on. But it had already been too long since I last saw those teeth in front of the hovel, nor could I remember when I last noticed that anybody went into or came out of it. It had been abandoned long ago, but it had not collapsed yet. For me, it was a monument of people’s wickedness and arrogance.

I thought for a moment that, shortly before I leave this world, the scene I saw only in my mind would crop up. A scene which happened in that house. A