How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 466

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Right now? The mass just started though?”

I bowed my head and whispered. Elias, whose eyes were gleaming, leaned his head toward me and said boldly.

“Yes, right now. Is it okay to leave here?”

“Haha… well… that would be a bit awkward.”

Narke whispered. No one would stop us from leaving, but it would be impolite. Elias held his head in his hands, then quickly ran his hand down from his eyes, and began rolling his bright blue eyes in all directions. He seemed to be pondering if there was a way to open the door and leave without being noticed. However, there was no such method, and he gave up, removing his hands from his face and slumping his body forward. I placed my hand on his drooping back and whispered.

“If you sleep like that and wake up, you might remember it just the same…”

“Mmm.”

Elias moved his upper body toward my waist. There seemed to be a communication error – I didn’t mean for him to sleep on my lap. Feeling absurd, I tried to push him away, but Elias didn’t give in and burrowed deeper. I could feel the quiet commotion drawing glances from the believers sitting nearby. Just as I was making all sorts of faces and sending a rescue request to Narke, Elias pulled out a notebook from the clutch above his wand holster. He could have just asked for it. When I pushed Elias with that meaning, Elias grinned. But he immediately returned to a serious expression and opened the notebook.

While he had been glancing tediously at the pages with my diary entries during his earlier research and note-taking, now he showed no interest in the pages with writing and searched for blank paper to scribble down words. He must have been thinking to minimize the amount of external information coming in, since new information could interfere with existing ideas. The sound of the fountain pen nib scratching against paper melted into and echoed with the priest’s calm voice.

I decided to ignore the glances reaching me from around and enjoy the scenery since Elias had already reached his conclusion. The morning sunlight touched and illuminated the majestic golden ceiling that required lifting one’s head high to see the end. The Byzantine-style marble columns erected between the ceiling and walls beneath the golden mosaics looked foreign but were the perfect choice for emphasizing mystique. They immediately made me feel that I wasn’t in Germany. The stone arcades standing thick along both side aisles of the nave were familiar, as they could often be seen in Romanesque and Gothic churches, and the countless arcades being built throughout Europe now were naturally also in the form of arched colonnades. However, given the scale of the cathedral, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. The floor was made of medieval mosaics, which was also somewhat familiar. Amidst the sound of the fountain pen, the priest’s voice echoing multiple times off the high ceiling, and the minor noises created by people’s slight movements, I closed my eyes.

When I opened my eyes again, it was when a soft veil touched my cheek. As I opened my eyes, slowly approaching light pierced through my pupils. My body was warm, as the sunlight had changed direction and risen to our faces.

“One person takes notes and one person sleeps.”

The person backlit by the sun smiled and scolded. I slowly turned my head in a drowsy mood to check my surroundings. Everyone was heading outside. Oh no, then I must have missed communion too. They probably thought I was a tourist and let it be. I pressed my eyes under the back of my hand and muttered.

“…Sorry. I was tired.”

“That’s understandable. Let’s go somewhere you can rest more comfortably.”

Narke made a gesture of drinking an elixir. Seeing that I was getting sleepy, it seemed like it was time to replenish. But if I drank it now, it would be conspicuous, so we needed to go somewhere without people. Elias was doing all sorts of things – putting my fountain pen behind his ear, then in his mouth, then opening the cap again to write something repeatedly. I briefly thought about hygiene but stopped – what could I do about it – and followed Narke out of the cathedral. He crossed the plaza and headed toward the southern building, Procuratie Nuove. We entered the building interior along the arched columns and found a cafe.

“What, there was a cafe within a 5-minute walk?”

“Haha. Do you know Giacomo Casanova? He used to frequent this place too. So did Lord Byron.”

“Hmm, Lord Byron is one thing, but Casanova frequenting here… is that a good thing?”

“It’s also an enjoyable experience to visit places where famous people went. It’s fun to imagine what they thought while looking at this scenery. Since the Adriatic Sea has flooded the plaza, shall we drink outside?”

“Sure.”

The flooding phenomenon that occurs throughout Venice due to the Adriatic Sea’s high tide is called acqua alta. I looked at the shallow seawater that had colored the plaza with morning sunlight. Acqua alta becomes most severe in winter and weakens in summer, but early April like now wasn’t quite safe enough to be completely at ease. Fortunately, the water wasn’t deep in the plaza today. It would be about 5cm high if measured. I had worn boots to hide the bandages, and luckily I didn’t have to get wet thanks to that. Sitting at an outdoor table, I slowly closed and opened my eyes following the movement of sunlight floating along the water surface. My consciousness drifted away to the sound of white pigeons’ wing beats.

“Hey~ The weather is nice, isn’t it?”

Elias appeared at some point and flicked his hand in front of my eyes, so I removed the hand supporting my chin and opened my eyes wide, waking from drowsiness. Elias had been following Narke around helping with his order, then quickly returned to our seats with him.

After a while, a server placed teacups on our table. I carefully held the elixir inside my hand and poured it into the teacup. After carefully taking a sip, my mind immediately became clear. By the time I finished the cup, I would feel much better. With that expectation, I looked at my friends. Narke was also looking at Elias. Receiving our gazes, Elias straightened his back like a speaker and made a “ahem” sound, then pretended to twist a non-existent mustache.

“Good day, everyone.”

“Just get to the point.”

“Tsk tsk.”

Elias clicked his tongue and shook his head, then leaned into the table like when playing games. He looked at us with a grave expression, then put a blueberry-studded pastry in his mouth and mumbled as he spoke.

“Now, throw me a word.”

A word – I could guess why that would be necessary without asking. He intended to give us a warm-up for reasoning. Perhaps he remembered the reaction we showed on the day he built the framework of his hypothesis using Moby Dick and Leviathan. Since he wasn’t the culprit, I could understand the process by which he tried to convince culprits like us – at least culprits in terms of having imagination that couldn’t easily follow Elias’s reasoning process. I took the pastry Narke offered and said.

“Cyprus orange.”

“Hmm, you still remember that. I’m touched. We’re going to eat them together. I need to see your orange peeling skills.”

“I’m not confident with knife work. I’ll just peel them with force for you.”

“See? This is how you negotiate~!”

Elias pointed at me and bragged to Narke. Actually, when we were crossing Lake Constance on the ferry, I had told him to imagine ‘Cyprus oranges,’ not to go to Cyprus to eat oranges, so Elias was feeling triumphant about having just managed to include me in the Cyprus orange gathering with his words. That’s how it seemed, anyway.

I just smiled and answered.

“Would it really be touching? Even if you don’t urge me to remember, I would never forget what I said to you.”

“Why?”

Why? I felt slightly flustered by the direct question after pushing both intentional and unintentional self-justification to the back of my consciousness.

How could I forget the time I spent with a friend like you – I could answer that way, and it was true, but there was a strange imperative in my heart that I must tell Elias something closer to the truth. I whispered, still feeling flustered.

“Because I can’t forget.”

“…”

Then Elias blinked quietly, and finally catching a useful topic, he shouted “Unforgetting, you mean-” and looked at the seawater in the plaza.

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Indeed.”

“Why? I meant that in the sense that you can’t eat the forbidden fruit.”

“I meant it the same way.”

Elias’s ocean-like eyes turned toward me. Conversations with Elias were based on the vast knowledge learned in this era’s gymnasium but flowed into stories beyond that.

Unable to eat the forbidden fruit – what could that mean?

Did it mean considering some possible world – that is, the Garden of Eden tens of thousands of years after Adam and Eve before their change of heart – as the only world and that I exist there, or was it because one who contemplates everything from above the Garden of Eden has no choice but to be unforgetting? God never forgets anything. Or did it mean that acquiring human freedom, knowledge, and escape to ignorance that the forbidden fruit represents is itself impossible? In this case, it meant I would have to live forever in the Garden of Eden as a puppet without free will. This would be the worst blessing for me as an atheist, and actually would be for Elias as a theist too.

Elias clarified nothing, and neither did I. It was exactly like our conversation about Moby Dick. I liked these unpredictable conversations. Even if a third party would think we’d all gone mad listening to such talk, such originality seemed to reveal Elias’s multifaceted thinking well and served as evidence that he accepted life as part of art. I was in Venice but felt like I was back on the Lake Constance ferry.

Elias clearly continued speaking while letting wind flow from his fingertips.

“One who cannot forget can become a descendant of Abraham’s faith, but is simultaneously Abraham’s father. Why? If you cannot forget anything even after drinking from the stream of Lethe – think about it. You won’t receive Beatrice’s scolding.”

When the name Beatrice came up, Narke smiled. Elias naturally invoked the Divine Comedy. Those who drink from the river Lethe can forget their earthly memories and ascend to heaven. In the Divine Comedy, the protagonist receives baptism from the waters of Lethe, loses his memory, then receives harsh scolding from Beatrice. His forgetting is proof of sin and means he still had worldly desires. I quietly spoke, recalling all the commentary I learned in literature class at the second academy.

“No matter how good one’s memory, isn’t there a possibility that drinking the water would make you forget cleanly? I’d like to forget everything and be purified too, if possible.”

“If drinking from the stream of Lethe leaves nothing to be forgotten, that means the person lived closer to Christ’s teachings than anyone else. Then perfect memory is a blessing and forgetting is the curse of death imposed on Adam’s descendants. It’s proof of original sin. New memories may enter the place of forgetting and transform into love, and though that strengthens humans, fundamentally forgetting occurs when grace falling upon us like scattered light is no longer grace.”

When the wonder surrounding us is no longer wonder, the spirit becomes habituated and grace falls into the realm of inertia. Habit accelerates time and ages objects. Habit is forgetting. Forgetting is proof of original sin written upon humans – those words struck my heart. Once again, he started with casual talk about Cyprus oranges and pierced through to the essence via the Divine Comedy.

Anyway, Elias ignored my words and continued what he was saying, and I felt he was similar to an older Elias. Even in the novel I encountered, 18-year-old Elias was never truly young, but now he seemed older than that. Elias thoroughly shook and unsettled my mood, then continued speaking without caring.

“But whose perspective is that? From the omniscient one’s perspective, countless acts of forgetting would be curses and illnesses that lead children toward the broad path. One who does not forget lives under infinite possibility to understand all things. One who understands all things has no desires. Like an omniscient universe. Meanwhile, forgetting grants limits to humans and incites humans to clench their fists toward peaks they can never reach. That is the broad path Narke mentioned, and from that arises the world’s chaos. Up to here, I’ve argued that the unforgetting God imposed the punishment of forgetting upon Adam and Eve’s descendants. But from our human perspective as Adam’s descendants, we stand in the world on frail legs that cannot inherit all the burdens carried on the omniscient one’s shoulders… forgetting becomes a most blissful thing when humans acknowledge their own weakness and bow their heads at the feet of the Most High. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Of course. There’s no reason I wouldn’t understand.”

“Right, so I hope you’ll drink from the stream of Lethe and forget something.”

“To think such words function as well-wishes…”

Narke whispered. I shrugged my shoulders, feeling an indescribable emptiness in a conversation that revealed Elias’s somewhat rebellious thoughts and thoroughly insulted my characteristics, while Elias casually brought up the Cyprus orange story again and muttered.

“Now, if you’ve followed well so far, let’s analyze St. Mark using that same logic.”

I just kept looking down at the table even at those words. Since Elias waved his hand in front of me, I recited lines from a Nietzsche book I read seven years ago in summer.

“Actually, some philosopher I read said there are blessings for humans who forget.”

“Hmm, good. Same topic. Then why are there blessings for those who forget?”

“Because forgetting ends foolish actions. Those who forget don’t cling to the past or to resentment. Forgetting can be thought of as nature’s forgiveness and memory as the possibility of revenge. More importantly, this person thought of forgetting not as habit but as active restraining power. While forgetting, people can distance themselves from the struggle of all things and protect themselves. They have intentional tranquility. Those who cannot forget have lost this ability, so they have no happiness, joy, hope, or present.”

“In short, forgetting is the strength of ‘animals.’ Still.”

Yes, still. As Elias said, from the Most High’s perspective forgetting might be weakness, but for humans forgetting becomes power. Up to this point, both had somewhat aligned thoughts. However, the middle process was slightly different – in Elias’s case, he said forgetting becomes blessed only when humans acknowledge that they are merely human. Nietzsche probably wouldn’t have thought this way. Elias wiggled his finger and muttered.

“Restraining power rather than habit – this philosopher must have very high expectations for humans. This is also an interesting perspective.”

“…”

“So through the digestive process of forgetting, one can construct a self distinct from all things. A human who cannot forget is a human who has lost digestive ability, one who must become one with all things rather than construct a self, and must exist in all times. That’s how it sounds.”

“That might be so…”

“Interesting. Who is this philosopher? Ah, no matter how I think about it, it’s an extremely human perspective. My argument that ‘forgetting becomes most blissful when humans acknowledge their weakness and bow at the feet of the Most High’ won’t reach this person. This person is thinking very anti-Christian thoughts. In this person’s world, God is not omniscient… humans are in that place. For this philosopher, to become human, one must necessarily know how to forget.”

“…”

I wanted to applaud. The student in front of me with foreign black hair and gleaming blue eyes was still Elias, and his abilities were still the same. We would have to struggle quite a bit to follow his insights.

I still didn’t answer the question about who that philosopher was. Instead, I tried to snatch the notebook from Elias’s grasp to organize the strange points I felt, but gave up. Note-taking activities advocating self-defense and self-suggestion weren’t really necessary for me. Thinking that way, I felt like I was sitting on a bed of thorns. If I received the notebook a little later, perhaps this sense of defeat would disappear if I wrote what I had wanted to write then.

I raised my head to look at my friends. Now the tea was half remaining. The elixir was forcibly infusing vitality into my body, and sea breeze brushed our collars. The light gradually moved overhead. Narke was looking at Elias, and I did the same through Narke. Elias, thinking we were ready, smiled confidently and said.

“Alright, guys. Fortunately, this time it’ll be much simpler than what we discussed earlier. I’ll state my speculation, so Narke, if you think of anyone, let me know right away! Keep in mind that I don’t know Papal affairs, so I might be barking up the wrong tree.”

“Of course~ Go ahead.”

“St. Mark’s remains weren’t here from the beginning but came here later. Right?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Stealing relics in this era was actually encouraged. Right? When the bones stolen from Alexandria came to Venice, many people from the Doge to the citizens thought they were under Mark’s grace.”

I nodded. So what? Elias raised his index finger and widened his eyes at us.

“Now, we need to think of the easiest answer first. How can ‘St. Mark’ that Ainsiedel referred to be interpreted primarily? St. Mark was Peter’s beloved disciple. Is this right? No matter how much I dozed off, I know at least this much.”

“Yes, that’s right~”

Narke nodded. This was information that had already come up in Narke’s and my conversation. Elias said seriously.

“What comes to mind with Papal States? I think of the Papacy first, and with the Papacy I think of the Holy See, and with the Holy See I think of Peter’s Apostolic See.”

“Are you playing word games?”

“Yes! Though slightly different, they’re essentially the same thing expressed differently. Under the assumption that our Papal traitor fits the iconography of St. Mark, Mark is…”

Elias paused briefly, quietly raised his head from where he sat and looked around. Then he looked at us again and said quietly.

“The Papal Secretary of State.”

“…”

“In other words, there’s a culprit in the Papal Secretariat. But it would be disappointing to end here. The Secretariat has various departments – internal affairs, foreign affairs… anyway, multiple departments and the number of workers is no joke, so what should we do? Besides, you probably thought of the Papal Secretariat as soon as you received the letter. Right?”

“Right.”

We nodded.

“So now we need to think about this. Who among the Secretariat? Even if I don’t know exactly what kind of person Ainsiedel is, seeing that he matches you guys, he’s probably no ordinary person, so the possibility that he simply put only one meaning into the code ‘St. Mark’ is low. As you know, one icon can contain multiple meanings.”

I had thought his word choice was a bit unusual when he said ‘the iconography of St. Mark’ earlier, and indeed he was interpreting St. Mark as if studying iconography – that is, considering the icon and the set of possible meanings contained within it.

Reading agreement in our eyes, Elias continued speaking.

“Now there’s too much information, that’s the problem. We need to filter the information. I’ve been thinking about what kind of image Ainsiedel projected onto the iconography of St. Mark. Why did he give the honorable name of St. Mark to the Judas of the Papacy? If it was just to let us know that Judas belonged to the Secretariat of State, he could have used other clues.”

Ah, I slowly raised the corners of my mouth. I was beginning to anticipate what he was trying to say. Narke was also resting his chin on his hand, smiling brightly as he looked at Elias.

“Ainsiedel overlaid negative elements onto ‘the archetype of St. Mark’ and conveyed it to us. The St. Mark we received is never the original St. Mark. It’s St. Mark with negativity added. We need to interpret this iconography. The negated St. Mark. The corrupt St. Mark. Really, it’s not even wordplay like you said – where can you find corruption in a saint?”

Elias raised his eyebrows at me with a smile. Then he slowly leaned forward on the table. He lowered his voice and spoke quietly.

“I mentioned it earlier. When the remains came here, the Venetians would have cheered. But when Mark’s remains arrived here, there was also someone who couldn’t celebrate that fact. Who would that be?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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