Memory №5: Medieval Europe. The Knight Gottfried. (The Art of Survival Amidst Filth and Dogma)

The air in the coffee shop suddenly thickened, becoming heavy and damp. The sweetish smell of latte was replaced by a pungent mixture of wood smoke, rancid mutton fat, and wet wool. I squeezed my eyes shut, and the cold, dank gloom of stone walls enveloped me.

After the refined alchemy of Li Bao, after my body had become a temple for divine energies, this world seemed like hell. I found myself in Northern France, in a castle more akin to a pile of stones, saturated through with despair. My "beloved" was the knight Gottfried-a man whose body consisted of battle-hardened muscles and a layer of perpetual grime.

Our wedding night… no, that word is inappropriate here. Our first duty took place in complete darkness, under a coarse woolen blanket. He smelled of the cattle yard and resignation-that peculiar odor of a man convinced that all things of the flesh are sin. I would have preferred Ovid's Latin to the Latin he whispered as he hurriedly removed my dress. He clutched not my body, but the fabric of my coarse shift-chemise, as if afraid to touch my skin.

"Wife," he wheezed, his breath smelling of onions and fear. "Let us perform our duty before the Lord."

There were no caresses, no prelude. Only a few quick, clumsy movements, after which he rolled to the edge of the straw pallet and began to pray. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling where shadows stirred, and felt not emptiness, but a dull, all-consuming anguish. Love had died here. Strangled by the fear of sin and lice.

I tried to recall something from the past-a light movement of a hand, a held breath, a hint of play… But he recoiled as if touched by the devil.

"Do not tempt me, woman!" he hissed, crossing himself. "Do not bring God's wrath upon us with your demonic wiles!"

Once, trying to brighten the dreary reality, I began to hum a melody I remembered from India. In horror, he clamped his rough palm over my mouth.

"Witchcraft!" his eyes bulged. "You summon demonic forces!"

I was nearly sent to the stake. I was saved only because my husband was an influential baron and vassal to the king. My ability to read and knowledge of languages were deemed not education, but the machinations of the unclean one. I learned to be silent. And to hide my knowledge deep, deep down, like the most precious and most dangerous treasure.

Sacrality was not simply lost. It was burned out with a red-hot iron of fear and ignorance. Sex here came in three varieties: duty, sin, or an awkward attempt to combine the former with the latter. There could be no talk of art, pleasure, or the union of souls.

Yes, it was an era that stripped love not only of its wings but of its very right to exist. But even then, in the darkest times, a spark smoldered somewhere deep within the soul. And it awaited its hour.

I opened my eyes. The coffee shop. The guy by the window was carefully adjusting the scarf on his girl. I looked at them with a new, strange tenderness. At least they could touch each other without fearing the eternal torments of hell. At least their hands were clean.

The next stop in my album promised to be much brighter. The Renaissance. Florence. And a man named Lorenzo, who taught me to laugh again. But that is a completely different story.