For a while things went well and I thought that I had at last found a place where I could rest the sole of my foot. Everything was to my taste — the room provided for me, albeit small and simple, with only the basic amenities: a bed, a table, a wardrobe, but with a splendid view of the mountain (oh, how that view filled me every morning with joy and ardour for the day ahead). It was only the kitchen, in the main house, that was not altogether to my taste — the hygiene of the place left much to be desired, in my opinion. (I can now see that it is a kind of devil’s kitchen, a place of doom and destruction, a place that is not only literally filthy, but also figuratively an unclean space.) As far as possible I tried to avoid it. Fortunately the setup here is such that the kitchen area and my room are fairly far removed from each other. I tried to the best of my abilities to keep everything I need — a kettle, a few pieces of crockery, some cutlery — in my room, and to make use of an outside tap to wash everything that I used. Even the animals on the farm I found unobjectionable.
But gradually, so gradually as initially to be hardly perceptible, his attitude to me changed. I started noticing it in casual comments that he passed. Something about my work, or my appearance. Comments with a false bottom, so that I was not sure whether I’d understood him correctly.
These comments gradually became more critical, so that I could no longer ignore them, or merely imagine their implication. I started seeing that they were aimed at unnerving me.
I started suspecting that through flattery, through all kinds of sweet-talking and false compliments he was not only trying to get me in his power, but that he was making certain covert propositions to me. These propositions were of a sexual nature.
The set-up here, furthermore, is such that a considerable number of people pass through — friends of the person, other artists, quite apart from the people living here permanently: a young black woman and her children, for instance, a sculptor — a large, strong man — the only one who is still well-disposed towards me. Also quite a few children of various ages, who are purportedly under the person’s wing.
Thus it came to pass that not only the person, but also his friends, started making questionable comments to me, and clearly were laughing at me behind my back and hatching plans to bring about my ruin.
This person, of whom I dare not mention the name, but to whom I shall henceforth refer as the Headman, thus gradually cast his net wider and wider. He involved his friends and followers in his iniquitous scheme to harm me, and later even to cause me bodily injury and destroy my soul. Soul murder was clearly his objective.
He started instructing his henchmen, as I shall henceforth refer to his friends and followers, to spy on me, to follow me wherever I went, and to level insults and later even obscenities at me.
And at last, as a final measure, they were instructed to subject me physically to whatever abominable deeds it pleased them to commit upon me. I do not now want to elaborate on the manifold ways in which I — my body — was delivered to them for their unbridled pleasure and use.
The mere thought, the memory of the agony inflicted upon my body and soul over an extended period, of the revolting ways in which body and soul were harrowed and abused, is enough to cast a dark cloud over my mind and to oppress my spirit anew.
My body was so tormented, I was so abased, that eventually I started wishing rather to be dead. Through the henchmen’s bestial relations with me, through the constant mockery and vilification directed at me, my spirit gradually started to fall asunder and my body to weaken beyond recognition.
As a consequence of these violent assaults of a sexual nature my other organs also started manifesting symptoms of illness. I experienced extreme pain in my intestines, my gullet sometimes felt lacerated and my ribs as if some of them were cracked.
Even the birds in the trees (and I now understand that they are the souls of the dead) eventually started taunting me. Almost insufferable, their day-long shrill mockery.
As I have said, I started longing intensely to be dead rather than to be subjected any longer to this devilish plot and these abominable practices.
In this manner a comprehensive effort was made to inflict irreparable damage upon my soul — also and especially through the licentious use of my body like that of a harlot.
Initially I thought that God was on the side of the Headman. That He was also one of those tormenting me. Naturally the suspicion that God had turned against me caused me infinite spiritual distress. It almost deprived me of my last morsel of strength. If everybody was against me, and God had also taken a seat with the scornful and the abusers, I realised that I had no refuge, or even a reason to carry on living.
But gradually, very gradually, initially through all kinds of subtle signs, God started revealing his true nature to me.
In time I achieved the insight that although the human being, like God, possesses nerves, human nerves differ from the nerves of God.
Human nerves are like fine filaments, very very fine. But God is exclusively nerves. These nerves of God connect him to everything in the whole of his creation. But where human nerves are finite, God’s nerves are infinite. There is no end to the nerves of God. They are fine, as the finest filaments, a thousandfold finer than human nerves, and infinitely more in number than human nerves. Through his nerves, furthermore, God can transform Himself into anything. His nerves enable God to perform feats far beyond the powers of comprehension of most people.
Now it gradually dawned upon me that my nerves, because they had for so long suffered a state of near-intolerable sensitivity, had started having an effect on God’s nerves.
My nerves interacted with God’s nerves — this intensified state of my nerves had in the long run started attracting God’s nerves to me. My exceptional spiritual and physical pain had gradually caused God’s nerves to focus on me, as a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun on a focal point.
I was ill for a long time, I endured bitter agony, my gullet at times felt lacerated, as I have mentioned, at times I could imagine that I had swallowed a portion of it while eating, at times it felt as if I had no lungs, so painful was my breathing, but time after time, so I started experiencing it, my damaged, tormented organs were healed again by God.
I started to realise that my agony was not in vain, but that God had started to elect me and that He had a plan with my life.
I think, indeed I know for a certainty, that God is transforming me for a higher purpose. God is turning me into a woman, that is the sign that He has given me. As soon as the transformation is complete, I will be invincible, and that will be the end of the Headman and his corrupt dominion. To that I have been called, to that God has elected me.
My dear brother, Iggy writes, I write these things to you so that you should be informed of all that I have had to endure the last few months, but also so that you should not despair on my behalf, because as you can see, I am with the help of God overcoming my lamentable circumstances. I hope soon to emerge triumphant from them, strengthened in my resolve, and inspired for the task to which God has elected me.
He can’t read any further, thinks Karl. Later, he’ll read the rest later. For the time being it’s enough. It is worse than anything he could have imagined.
Five million metric tons of soot
HOLY FUCK, THINKS KARL, this he wasn’t prepared for. God turning Iggy into a woman! Does Iggy really believe it? That must explain the woman’s clothing. Who can blame the fucking Josias-guy for thinking Iggy’s lost his marbles? But what if just half, just a fraction, just a grain of what Iggy says is true, however far-fetched and off-the-wall it sounds? What if the man is some kind of evil-doer and has done just something to trigger this condition in Iggy? (The psychic did after all sense a place with unholy goings-on.)