The Dartagnan Brothers Hotel

Chapter 9

A heavy rain, which had taken the place of the starry sky, bet against the small window of the hut, whilst Jonas hovered his eyes over Getulio. The thing he wanted the least at that point was to be part of a game between the Dartagnan brothers, but the tone in Getulio's voice implied that Jonas had no option but to comply with his request and hope that, in the end, the old man would comply with his promise of getting him out of there. After storming out from the small and deteriorated bed, he admired the stacks of books and papers on Getulio's table. He couldn't help showing the curiosity he had been feeling with all that history caused by the feud within the Dartagnan family.
Getulio leaned against the wall at the end of the bed and began to massage the end of what was left of his leg. He slowly removed the bandage covered by poorly dirty cloths and indicated that Jonas should reach him an old-fashioned wooden box that was inside the small cupboard above the wood burning stove. The old Dartagnan grasped his hands around new bandages and a small glass that contained an antiseptic; little by little, whilst making a slight expression of pain, he put the bandage back on and covered the stump with a blanket that was crammed at the foot of the bed.
"Could you tell me a bit more about Catharism?' Jonas decided to surrender to the history lesson and submit to the fact that Getulio had a wide advantage over that situation.
'The history of Catharism is beside the point.' he started to answer whilst adjusting himself to give more support to his lower back. 'What's really important is  what came from it, as I told you before, the Holy Inquisition.'
'You mean to say that I'm an offering to the Holy fucking Inquisition?' asked Jonas, who thought he was gradually starting to connect the dots of the whole situation.
'I honestly don't know what Giovanni's goal is in your case, I haven't had an honest conversation with my brother in months, but if you're here, I'm not going to lie, you're part of his plans.'
'How long have you been locked in that fountain?' Jonas realised that he still knew almost nothing about Getulio's situation.
'I lost count of the days, but I've been isolated from the world for a long time.' the tone of sadness and the expression of pain returned to his face every time he spoke about it.
'Well then, help me understand why your brother is doing this, what does he hope to achieve by torturing me like this? Jonas was getting more and more restless.
Getulio took a deep breath, giving the impression that he was tired of that story and everything that involved his brother's name.
'Why don't you do us a favor and boil up some water and make us some coffee. I'm going to tell you a story about my family.' he said as he fidgeted in bed seeking the greatest possible position.
Jonas was feeling enthusiastic for a change, which, added to the feeling of anxiety, left him agitated as he searched for the necessary utensils to prepare the coffee. Things in Getulio's hut were not very organised, but at least the wood was stacked in the stove compartment. He remembered that he had kept Giovanni's lighter the last time he saw him, then reaching out  for the object in the back pocket of his pants and setting fire to the sticks that were placed between the small stumps of wood. The silence had taken over the environment, which was not good for Jonas's anxiety.
'You were saying?' he decided to break the silence whilst pouring hot water from the kettle over a dirty old coffee filter that was decanting in a rusty pot.
'Hmm?' grunted Getulio when leaving what looked like a trance, he had a tired expression in his face.
'You told me you were going to tell me a story...'
'Oh yes. So. My family.' he got back to it slowly whilst holding the cup that Jonas had just given him.
"This entire property was nothing but a large open field. My parents were farmers and lived off subsistence agriculture, which was passed on to me and my brother whilst we were still very young children, so we learned to grow and kill what we ate. My life has always been like this, for as long as I can remember, and I always accepted reality as it was, that's how my parents taught me.
My mother, Ms. Claudia Dartagnan, was a very religious woman, one of those people who vehemently followed the words of the bible. She was a housewife, prayed every day and made sure that her children followed a life devoted to god as she took us to church every Sunday, which, in my childhood, made me feel very comfortable about the simple life we ​​lived, until I changed my mind and my relationship with the family started to grow distant. Giovanni, like me, was always a respectful and hardworking person, never letting anything upset my mother, who always did everything to make sure we had the best possible life.
My father, Mr. Mateus Dartagnan, was a simple man for most of his life. He treated his family like a true patriarch and had never failed to put food on the table. The work was rural, as I told you, but the old man had always had greater ambitions in his life. The idea of ​​building a hotel on the property came from Giovanni, he left home so he could study and live in the big city, and when he returned, he did everything to convince our father to transform this estate into a greater source of income.
Giovanni's initial idea was to combine the hotel with a place of divine devotion, you probably haven't seen it, but next to that main structure there is a humble beautiful little church, built by our family with a lot of work and dedication, which we shared with the neighbourhood - and by that I mean other farmer that lived kilometres away - that wished to worship our religion the same way we did. Neither my father nor my mother insisted that the world follow their beliefs to the letter, they never tried to impose their creed on anyone who came to stay at the Dartagnan's Hotel. The little church was there, and everyone who wanted to visit it would be welcome.
With the death of our parents, Giovanni decided to give business a different direction. Since he had left home to study, he managed to convince me that the hotel could make a lot more profit than it was doing. I confess that, despite the desire to have a simple life, the extra money has always attracted me, but I think that this is intrinsic instinct to every human being, or at least that's what I tell myself to ease the guilt. Gradually, he began to accept only devoted catholic guests at the hotel, promoting, more and more, orthodox services and imposing his literal interpretation of the bible on everyone who passed by and was inclined to listen to his words. I decided not to pay much attention to Giovanni's delusions. Even though I didn't have much experience in the big city, I knew that the world had changed and people no longer had that urge in taking religious teachings literally.
However, as time passed, the group of people who came to the property began to increase. Many did not even come to stay at the hotel, as they would stay only a few hours locked in that church until it was time to leave. Despite my disbelief, I've always respected my parents' wishes, but since their death, I decided to assume who I was once and for all, and never set foot in that chapel again, so I didn't know the proportion that things were taking, much less what was Giovanni's goal in raising so many devotees to his cause, and that was when I decided it was time to intervene and stay on top of what was happening in my own back garden.
I can't find words to describe exactly what I witnessed the night I decided to attend one of Giovanni's meetings. I hid in his office and watched how my brother managed to catch the attention of all those people using only the gift of oratory. I was astonished. The vision of that meeting showed me that there were still many people in the world who could be deceived by abusive interpretations of a book that should be treated more like a fairy tale than anything else. Giovanni was convincing people that society needed to resume the teachings of the church, that heresies needed to be nipped in the bud and that the only way they could succeed in that would be to bring a variant of the Holy Inquisition back.
You see... This was the exact moment of when I should have kept quiet, followed on with my little life and dedicated myself to my studies. But no. That was when I decided to write that column in the newspaper and express an opinion that was extremely contrary to that of Giovanni and his group of believers. In the next few days, after the newspaper was published, the church was empty. People just didn't want to come back to the hotel and life was getting back to how it was. New guests started to book rooms and enjoy the wonders that this place has to offer, but that started to annoy Giovanni. He was already accustomed to having followers and to the feeling of power that those followers were providing him, but they could not bear to have their leader's own brother publicly upset him in the city's largest source of media.
My brother went completely mad. He came after me demanding satisfactions and repressed me with all his will. Understand, we have never been best friends, but we've always supported each other and learned to live in harmony in our own separate little ways. And I knew it was my fault, I was the one who went after problems that didn't exist, but what I saw that day, in that church, inside my own property, left me disgusted, I would not be able to keep silent. I needed to do something. My first option had been to alert the authorities, to seek help with politicians and law-enforcement officers who could help stop his madness, but many of the sect participants were members of the upper echelons of society, it was when I realised that the only way to stop my brother would be to continue with what I was doing . Alert people to what was going on.
As I couldn't just go on accusing people with that kind of status in society of trying to revive an archaic and criminal religious practice, I went out with all I had in the first article I published to try and explain how that kind of thing could be dangerous for society , so then, and only then, in a second article, I could open up the barbarities that were being discussed during those meetings. But it was already too late. Giovanni did not let my follow up article leave the hotel.
As soon as my brother found out what I was doing, he ordered his cronies to arrest me and take me to their meeting, that's when it was over for me. He morally repressed me and made me tell him everything I knew, as he argued that I would never have enough proof to support my thesis and that no one in the world would take my words into consideration and credit me as nothing but a conspiracy theorist. And he was right, you see. I was wrong, because only after my downfall they start doing what they are doing now, the same thing they are doing to you, which, in fact, started with me, and the rest you can see for yourself."
Jonas was numb by the whole story he had just heard. It seemed impossible to him that there were still people capable of imposing their views, based on archaic institutions, through torture. He was getting a better understanding of Getulio's concern, who seemed really frightened by the proportions that his brother's plans might take. The fighting expression on the old man's face began to captivate Jonas's empathy.
'You were the first then... Am I the second?' he broke the silence by asking what was eating him from the inside.
'Probably not, but you are the first one to reach me.' he replied with a sad tone.
'You need to help me understand what's going on, and what would my role be in this whole story!' exclaimed Jonas vehemently as he got excited by the plot that was being built inside his head.
'I want to help you, my boy. But you need to help me too.'
'What do you want me to do?'
'First of all, you need to trust me, and tell me exactly what you did to be here.' replied Getulio as he tried to demonstrate a calm tone so that Jonas would feel as he was in a comfortable place.
'I really do not know.' he lied again.
'It's obvious that you know... After everything I told you, I have to know exactly why you are here. You have certainly done something that goes against Giovanni's belief. You need to tell me what it is, then, and only then, I'll be able to help you.' the old man answered sincerely, hoping that Jonas would stop hiding the truth.
Jonas definitely knew that he was still not fully able to trust Getulio, despite the fact that the story was taking shape and making more sense. He was alone in that place, without friends, without a phone, and without any hope that he would get out of there any time soon. Giovanni Dartagnan's brother was his only option.
'I am trying to connect all the points so I can make sense of this situation. Try to understand, I am being emerged into lucid dreams since I got here, which to me is really strange, but that makes sense since, after all, they are nothing but dreams.' he decided to open up a little more with what seemed to be his only hope. 'But I realised that there is something more to it, such as the tattoos on my arm that I don't remember getting. How is it possible that I wake up from a dream that has such real consequences?'
'Let me see these tattoos again.' said Getulio as he gestured for Jonas to approach the bed where he was still lying into.
Jonas snapped his crumpled, dirty with mud and blood shirt, and rebounded his shirt on the left arm to show Getulio the still-painful images that were recently made by Giovanni and his gang of lunatics whilst he was tormented by those lucid dreams. The inverted cross was already creating a small layer of hard blood on the edges of the badly made and crooked drawing, whilst the phrase 'Fallacia Alia Aliam Trudit.', that was written in a horrible calligraphy, was still red from the recent needles he had taken whilst sleeping.
'They could only have done this whilst I was sleeping in the maze, right?' he asked rhetorically, hoping it that was the only plausible explanation.
'The cross can have two meanings.' started Getulio whilst ignoring Jonas's question. 'This symbol is known as the cross of Saint Peter, which represented, at the time, the humility of the apostle before Jesus.' he finished whilst continuing to enjoy his coffee.
'And what would the other possible meaning be?' asked Jonas anxiously.
'The other came years later, still during the middle ages, when satanic sects started to use the inverted cross to represent the anti-christ.' he replied cautiously.
He felt like he was in a history class, as he listened to that gentleman speak with such passion and congruence about a subject of which he seemed to have enormous knowledge about. Jonas had never been a man who had much interest in knowing things like that, but the new knowledge that was being bestowed upon him during that night seemed to connect very well with myriad of events that were taking over his life for the past few hours. It seemed appropriate that he would understand everything he heard from the old man in order to find a point in common with what he had done so that he could understand why Giovanni would find him worthy of receiving any punishment that awaited his call.
'And which of these meanings would fit into my situation?' he asked reluctantly.
'How am I supposed to know?' Getulio frowned and shook his head. 'You do remember that I've been locked in here until you found me right? By the way, you still haven't told me what you did...'
That was an odd thing to say since he knew about the party that was going on and that Rodrigo was with him before they met.
'Do you know what that saying in Latin means?' asked Jonas, looking to gather as much information as he could drain from the old man.
'It means: One lie leads to another.' replied Getulio without having to think twice, seeming to have the answers to all the religious questions that Jonas may have.
Jonas instantly understood the connection of that saying with the mistakes he had made in the past. His reluctance to accept what he had done, which came to be a crime, led him to cover his mistakes with more and more lies. The induction to that lucid dream, which showed him the situation from a different point of view, made him empathise with Joana Clemente in that situation for the first time. He had never thought about how his old girlfriend felt when she lost a child, something that for him was nothing more than a future illusion never to be made concrete.
'That has a connection with that butterfly statue, doesn't it?' he said as he was already waiting for the confirmation of his own question.
'Veritas Semper Una Est.' intoned the old man. 'Truth is always one. It does make sense. The butterfly, for christianity, represents resurrection, the acceptance of an error as a form of transformation and rebirth.' he finished when making the analogy between the phrase and the statue.
'Now things are starting to make sense...', he thought as he tried not to show any kind of excitement. There were still many things he wanted to extract from Getulio before he could end that relationship in a favourable situation for himself.
Jonas had already understood that Getulio wanted his help. He needed him to take his message out and spread it to the whole world, it seemed very important to the old man that Jonas only left that place with the goal of ending Giovanni's plans, which made sense, but Jonas's goal was to go home, away from that madness and everything that could hurt him. Not that he was reluctant to help Getulio to expose his lunatic of brother to society, to draw attention from outside the city, and to contain all those abuses that the sect had been committing. The Holy Inquisition had been abolished centuries ago, and there was no reason for people to fear the resurgence of that much ignorance and cruelty. But that would be a difficult job, since Giovanni held so many people that were important figures in the society in his hands, and the mere mention of it in the media would merely sound like another conspiracy theory.
'I can only assume, then, that the letter J means Jesus. Truth is always one, hence one lie has always led to another and Jesus is my salvation by resurrection?' Jonas was impressed with himself. He had been able to absorb the information and transform it into complicated thinking despite the fact he was under the pressure of saving his own life.
'It's a possibility, but I don't think we should stick to only one of those. Giovanni is an astute man, there is always something to read in between the lines.' replied Getulio with a tone of excitement, as if they were getting somewhere.
'And the statue of the fish, what does that mean?' asked Jonas, after telling Getulio about the second statue he had found in the maze, trying to take advantage of the fluidity of his reasoning.
'The fish statue is nothing more than the representation of faith in Jesus Christ, who is the son of god.' he replied slowly as he tried to drag himself across the bed until he could reach some papers that were somewhere within the mess that was his desk. 'But here's the most interesting and important thing.' he handed over to Jonas a torn and worn out pamphlet.
'There's also a Latin saying on it as well: Laedere Facile, Mederi Difficile.' he continued what seemed to be an endless pool of demands.
'No idea of what that one means.' Getulio's wisdom seemed to have a limit after all.
Jonas grabbed the paper whilst looking for answers to the most diverse questions he still had about that night, but he came across what looked like a draft of an explanatory booklet titled 'C.P.F'. Below the title were described several conservative and moralistic conducts, aimed at members of what appeared to be some type of secret society. Torture instructions, explanations of how to bait prey, and various assumptions of conduct to be followed by all participants. It was basically a book of horrors.
Small images illustrated archaic torture practices that were to be combined with several new technological forms of how to deceive heretics and convince them to join the cause. It was all there, most of the answers Jonas was seeking about what was happening to him. A small explanatory chart described the drug he was being administered and how lucid dreams could induce pagans to seek their own penance and accept torture as a form of redemption, or 'divine acceptance', as the little propaganda preached.
Jonas couldn't quite understand how the drug worked. The booklet was limited to mentioning expressions such as: 'psychotic predisposition' and 'depersonalisation', which was enough to illustrate the macabre basis of the organisation created by Giovanni Dartagnan. At the bottom of the page, another expression in Latin returned to spread doubts in Jonas's mind: 'Ubi Est Cadaver Ibi Congregantur Aquilae', which again made no sense to him, but this time Getulio was there to clear up his doubts.
'C.P.F?' he asked as he looked up and down throughout the sheet of paper and went straight to find Getulio's eyes.
'Christian Pendulum of Freedom.' he replied with a smear smile on his face. 'It seems hard to believe, doesn't it? But the truth is that Giovanni plans to do exactly what is written in there.'
'And the Latin expression?'
'It's their jargon...' said Getulio reluctantly before translating. 'Where there is carrion, there are vultures.' This is how they refer to what they call heretics, and the metaphor is completed by the allusion that vultures must satisfy their hunger by penance.
'Who are the vultures?'
'They are Giovanni's followers, those who wish to clean society from all evil brought by disbelief. Vultures eat rotten meat. Understood?' Getulio ended the explanation with an expression of admiration on his face. He seemed to take immense pleasure in elucidating the situation.
'How do you have all this information?' asked Jonas incredulously as he realised that the situation he was in was much more complex than it appeared. The small pamphlet illustrated proposals for various criminal practices to be carried on by the C.P.F., the ideas were so deranged that Jonas would take it as some kind of unpleasant joke if he didn't know Giovanni's true story and plans.
'My brother has a very clever way to confront me. After locking me in that fountain for the first time - yes I've been there more than once - he presented me with this pamphlet that would be given to members of the organisation.' replied Getulio, showing admiration for the coldness of his own brother, who had left aside family to seek his divine call at the expense of his well-being.
'What does the description of this drug mean? Do they really call it The Cure?' the indignation was such that the questions came out faster than he could think.
'It's exactly what is written in there, that's how it works.' replied Getulio as if Jonas was already caught up in all of the nuisances of the myriad of information he had just bestowed upon him, but he did not want to show ignorance and lose the old one-legged man's confidence, besides, he was no longer feeling any kind of discomfort, and Douglas, the hired doctor, had made it clear it would be very dangerous to give him another dose of the drug.
The situation had become extremely complex. Giovanni Dartagnan was not just trying to punish Jonas for the crime he had committed. He knew that drugging someone to have an abortion against his will was not the first rule in the book of good manners, but he imagined that it would not be the worst conduct practiced by the people of which he could reach. Getulio expressed the speed with which the C.P.F was growing, and how it was essential that Jonas helped him to alert society as a whole of what was to come. It all made sense, and Jonas would have a long way to go until he was safe and sound in the comfort of his home.
'I understand what you mean now. We must put an end to it all.' said Jonas as he expressed the exact words Getulio wanted to hear, but the main plan remained the same: to leave that place alive.
'So you do understand why I need you to trust me?' said Getulio, who had not yet finished his coffee.
'I understand it perfectly.' said Jonas without having to lie. Finally he decided it was time to share everything he knew about his situation with the old man. He was, indeed, part of the team that wanted to hold Giovanni responsible for his atrocities..
The headaches came to dwell inside his mind and take over his thoughts, he suffered a strong imbalance and tried to hold onto the chair to his right, but a strong sting made him fall over it. Jonas let the cup, still full of coffee, shatter on the floor and lost control of his will once again.