Count, how do you think, how much thinking people asking questions that can puzzle the professional theologians can one find today – in the beginning of the third millennium?

Pfanfaltz silenced reflecting upon something and excused himself. He went to his library and retuned with newspapers copies.

Here, Holmes, listen:

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock’n’roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me”.

And some more:

“I’m not against the Lord, Christ or religion. I don’t say that we are higher or better. I believe in God, but not as in an old man on the skies. I believe that all what did Christ, Muhammad, Buddha preached was right, but their interpreters did many mistakes”[43].

Count, who did say it?

This is the interview of youth’s idol of the sixties, John Lennon, which he gave to Maureen Cleave, a reporter of the London’s paper “Evening Standard” in 1966.

How surprising for simple “rock musician” and even for a popular one! I should say, I’ve never heard something of a kind in England; but even if I had heard it, it would hardly have attracted me without your unusual commentaries to the episode with Saul. However, Lennon was murdered. Were these words a cause, I wonder?

I don’t know it. After his death the command came apart. One of them, as I remember, Harris studied Hinduism and, if to believe the press, was hardly ill. It’s a consequence of a worldview crisis, as I see it, or may be of those tasks, which were entrusted to them passing over their minds.

I’m surprised not by this, count. But how you manage to trace all of this and, moreover, to have your own opinion on the questions seemed to go without saying?

It’s considered, that in my age people use to sink into dotage. Russians call it “sink into a childhood”. May be it’s so, but very in childish age one is free of delusions and mistakes of youth and middle ages. So the systemic limits on psyche we discussed earlier could be overcome in the easiest way and thus the possibilities to get some new knowledge appear, of course if the senile brains haven’t completely depredated yet. Unfortunately it’s really hard to save the childish perception until the declining years living in our defective civilization, but… – here the teller paused and cheerfully smiled to his guests. – May be I’m the very rare specimen who “has fallen into childhood” just in proper time?

The count was far more than eighty, but he looked hale and hearty enough, his speech was connected and he thoroughly chose the words of the foreign language trying to express his thoughts very precisely and neatly. Some his thoughts seemed to be far from sensible but each time this feeling went away because of a vivid shine of his eyes strengthened by well-composed speech and a little reticence. Simply speaking, he made a wonderful impression upon a listener, may be even some kind of hypnotism. All this Holmes decided later, when he and Renier were far from “Askania-Nova”; and now Holmes attentively listened to count’s story.

So, gentlemen, I am sure that the acts of terrorism in New York and Washington were hold in the “John the Baptiser’s Decapitation” not occasionally. Everybody should pay his checks: the circle has been enclosed. The Acrisius and his grandson Perseus myth algorithm, which first part was the seemed to be harmless photo in “Trud”, has finished sixteen years later with the bloody final that anyone could see. The west civilization considering itself to be a Christian one is a biblical civilization per se; however, it is started not from the crucifixion of Christ as the church canons and the official history assure the people, but from the act of “John the Baptiser’s Decapitation”[44].On September 11, 2001, the time of this civilization has ended. The epoch of Pisces has lasted for two millennia; it is followed, as one knows, by the epoch of Aquarius. Pisces (looking as fishes) is a symbol of the biblical civilization and we found such a symbol – “the dead fish” – on the third “Post Historical Picnic”. What does it mean? Just the fall of the biblical civilization. For an ordinary western man, who fights back all unpleasant “mystics”, it’s hard to believe in it. But if one don’t believe and don’t think about it, I would not like to say, there will be other signs, and unfortunately also tragic. Gentlemen, I see in your eyes that you are waiting for some clear explanations of my version or some proofs.

No use: there can be no logical proof on the basis of some axioms in the solution of these problems. God always talks with people on the language of life’s circumstances. And using the whole historical experience one can see that it is the life’s axiom, though somebody may express it more precisely than I did. One either accepts it on trust or doesn’t accept it “on trust” as well. Nevertheless, how the history’s oppressiveness shows, the majority of people want neither to hear nor to understand the sentences of this language.

Dear Mr. Holmes, you are young and have a certain experience in solving puzzles of such kind. My old friend Lois Renier told me of your visit to Zurich and I asked him to arrange our meeting. Obviously, you have expected to hear something else but I can’t help you any more. Yes, I know and understand something what I’ve told you of relying on my family traditions and legends. But the noble aristocracy in a majority of it has lost its creative potential; notwithstanding the fact that there are some its strange and curious representatives, who still is interested by new information or fresh ideas. What I have told you is not just my thoughts. For the last year I was studying the works published at the site www.dotu.ru. It is Russian[45] and I have no problems with it, since each and every idea can be interpreted unambiguously. And if you are interested where does the worldviews like one you’ve heard here come from, you should visit this site. You will find there many things that will help you to turn over a new leaf in your worldview and to escape the prison of old stereotypes. I also hope that you, Holmes, will help us to solve this riddle. I’m ready to give you all assistance I can give. Feel free to use any material I have.

* *

*

Everybody felt himself overfilled by the impressions. Moreover it’s darkening quickly in the mountains and Renier wanted to reach Zurich before dark. The parting was natural and sincere. The master followed the car until it turned. Silver BMW seemed to drive by itself as if Renier had only helped it. Holmes was thoughtful and kept silence. Something told by Pfanfaltz proofed his hypothesis but much was so uncommon, new and unexpected that goes far beyond the worldview with which he had entered “Ascania-Nova”. And he needed a time and an intimate knowledge of the “picnics” symbolism to comprehend everything heard.

September 27 – October 4. Spain. Madrid – El Escorial

The whole next day Holmes spent in Geneva and on Thursday, September 27, left for Madrid by a morning flight. Imagine how he was surprised when installing himself in his room in the hotel[46], situated opposite to the world-known museum “El Prado”, he switched on a TV set and heard a report about the act of terrorism in the parliament of canton Zug. Some person dressed like a policeman freely entered the conference building and coolly shot eleven members of parliament and three members of government and then he committed a suicide. It was told that the “kamikaze” had been on the books of local mental health service and had got some claims for the members of parliament. An act of terrorism once again and once again a “maniac”. Moreover, there were eleven victims and Holmes, remembering Pfanfaltz’s words about the language of life’s circumstances, considered this event to be somehow symbolic and fatalistic.