We reached the city's edge with full sacks and burning lungs, just as people were timidly reopening their doors. In a narrow square squeezed between Boston-style wooden houses, the succubi lay in wait for passersby: heaving breasts, pale thighs, hands brushing arms and belts.
"A coin! A memory!" they chirped, until someone yielded to the call and was dragged into a nearby purple tent.
"Why do they feed on memories?" I asked.
Becker looked at me as one looks at a fool. "How… hast thou lived here a month without learning anything? Had we not crossed paths, I would have given thee less than a week."
"If we hadn't crossed paths, I'd have bled out in a puddle…" I retorted.
He laughed, pleased. The sweat had melted his foundation and eyeliner, leaving his face like a Phoenician mask — grotesque and solemn at once.
"The succubi," he continued, "are infernal handmaidens. Renaissance scholars believed they stole sexual energy in dreams… fantasies. In truth, they seduce only to plunder the finest memories. They live on the emotions those recollections release: the more precious the memory, the more intense the pleasure."
He wiped his brow, as if brushing away an unpleasant thought."When they mate with a soul, they rummage through the mind like marauders. Those who yield too often end up hollowed out — an empty shell, with nothing left to push it forward. To give oneself to a succuba is to allow another to violate one's psyche. And many do it on purpose: Hell weighs heavily, and forgetting what one has lost feels like relief. Brief… and cowardly. But relief nonetheless."
"Terrible…" I murmured.
It was hard to believe that, under Lucifer's rule, Hell had truly been a better place. Creatures like these could hardly be Charon's invention. Perhaps these tales existed only to paint the present darker than the past — as humans have always done. The same instinct that drove some to throw themselves into a succuba's arms: human in life, human after death.
Perhaps that was what Becker meant when he urged me to lose my humanity. Not to abandon hope — but to stop letting a godless world break me.
I watched him advance quickly through the less crowded alleys, avoiding every gaze. There was a natural authority in him that impressed me each time.
He who controls the past writes the future, I thought. Charon knew it. He had built a perfect system, stripping hope away piece by piece. Here, everyone — believer or not — eventually yielded. They lost coins chasing the mirage of seeing loved ones again, sold memories to forget what they could never reclaim, abandoned ideals because friendship no longer existed.
"When you said I had to lose my humanity… did you mean I should keep hope alive? Not break under all this?" I asked.
Becker shot me a sharp glance. "Herr Cremaschi, thou dost surprise me more each day."
"Thank you…"
"I did not mean that, of course, though I appreciate thy analysis. To survive, one must reconsider earthly priorities. First among them: respect for the dead. The dead are not. Full stop. Mourning them here is useless — they serve only as sentimental tokens to pay Charon."
We kept walking as he spoke.
"When a soul dies, it disappears. It becomes an Echo and dissolves. It is incomplete, and an incomplete soul extinguishes itself once it loses the rest of what it was. Sometimes in days, sometimes in years or centuries — like the woman in the Camposanto — but it fades. And even keeping the bones changes nothing. In theory, only when the soul is whole does it become infinite."
My head spun. "But you said the opposite! How can it be infinite if it can die?"
"Do not place in my mouth words that are not mine," he snapped. "The soul is immortal. But our delusion of being alive taints it — and this is where the discourse on losing humanity begins. 'Tis complex… and we have arrived. Let us postpone this to a hearty breakfast."
My stomach growled. I was exhausted. I followed Becker through the heavy door; we set the sacks down in my room and climbed an inlaid wooden staircase. A neoclassical corridor opened, followed by a baroque drawing room with putti at the corners and pagan gods painted on the ceiling, their legs dangling from the clouds.
I was speechless.
"You live in a splendid house, Master Becker."
"Thou likest it? It belonged to a Venetian dignitary, a friend of mine. The interiors were his. I was dismayed to find the Tiepolo frescoes destroyed — ruined by the sea air. I was fortunate to find this home when I arrived, and I never left it."
"How long have you been here?"
As I asked, he placed a copper saucepan and a pewter kettle on the stove. "I ceased counting the days long ago. Charon wants no dates — only a flat, endless time that erodes whoever stays too long."
He pointed to a blue-and-white cabinet adorned with golden lilies. "Fetch two cups from the French credenza. And I beg thee, do not break them: thy predecessor shattered half in one blow."
I retrieved two cups decorated with an Etruscan black-and-orange frieze. I set them carefully onto the lace tablecloth and collapsed into the chair.
"These cups," he said while pouring the tea, "are my dearest memory of life. A Neapolitan ceramist gifted them to me in 1790. One day I confused the crate of counterfeit coins with the crate of ceramics and dragged the service for leagues, my horses at full gallop. I wept when I discovered it."
"Why were you dragging a crate of counterfeit coins?"
"Is it not obvious? You men of the future have no false coins? Or art thou too naïve to notice?""Where I come from, we use paper. Banknotes."
He paused. "Remarkable! I would not have wagered a taler on that French lunacy… the Assignats! That yokel Napoleon spread them across Europe as if they were revelation!"
He set down würstel and eggs over sauerkraut. I dove onto the plate.
"Did you know Napoleon?" I asked with a full mouth.
"Use thy cutlery, if thou canst," he scolded. "I did not know that Frenchman. My patron, Carl Friedrich Ludwig Moritz von Isenburg-Birstein, had only contempt for him. A pompous man, ignorant, a fortune built on grief. He even dared correct a dear friend of mine on one of his finest works…"
And he went on, listing illustrious friends and famous enemies. I, meanwhile, noticed he never touched food — only tea. Untouched, save for his dirty clothes.
"…and that is why The Sorrows of Young Werther ought to lie beside the Bible on any bedside table."
The monologue ended as my plate emptied. A pity there was no bread.
"You don't eat?" I asked.
He smiled. "We have no need of food, Herr Narr. We are souls. The sooner thou accept it, the better."
He raised the cup to his lips.
"I imagine this concerns the whole 'losing humanity' idea," I said.
He clapped softly. "Sehr gut. Thou art beginning to understand. For now I indulge thy earthly cravings, but soon thou wilt see they are mere superstructures to be shed — for thy benefit and thy life."
He stood, and I had to follow.
"Come. The skulls await us."
I longed to beg for a break. "Could we not… after some rest?"